gements. Afterwards I must do my best
for them over here. I never thought that I could do as I would as a
married man. Do you think I ought not to have consented?"

"She would have gone without your consent."

Lady Agatha came over and put a hand on her shoulder, a kind, caressing
hand.

"You are quite right," she said. "Oh, he has wriggled, but it had to be.
It had to be, from the first minute we met."

"I knew it."

"You did, you wise woman. And you will keep house for me when I am gone?
You will take care of the dogs for me? You will oscillate between Hazels
and town? You will keep the places ready against our return? You are
never to leave us."

Mrs. Morres's eyes overflowed.

"My dear," she said, "it would have broken my heart to have left you.
And Mary--what is to become of Mary?"

"I have a plan for Mary, unless she will stay here with you."

"I must earn my bread," said Mary.

"For all the bread you eat, I eat four times as much as you. Still, you
have talents to be used for the many, as Sir Michael Auberon said. I
have no right to keep you from them. You will talk to Robin Drummond
about that. He is starting a bureau for purposes of organisation amongst
the women. He has had his eye on you. I told him he could not have you.
Now, it will fill a gap, perhaps. I shall need you again."

"The funny thing," said Mrs. Morres, and the amusement had come back in
her voice--"is that Colonel St. Leger won't like your marriage at all.
He has always wanted you to be married. But now--this African
marriage--he will talk about it as though you were marrying a man of
colour, Agatha, my dear. How his eyebrows will go out!"

"To think," said Mary, with a little sigh, "that the novel is
unfinished, after all."

"A novel is so much more interesting," said Lady Agatha, "when you live
it, Mary. Besides, it has troubled me that if I published the novel I
must come into competition with the legitimate workers. They should form
a Trades' Union against us, women of leisure and money, to keep us from
poaching on their preserves. They really should. My dears, I have a
presentiment that the novel never will be finished."

CHAPTER XIII

THE HEART OF A FATHER

Oddly enough, seeing the General's feeling towards his sister-in-law,
seeing, too, that he and Nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste
that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on Nelly's part for
Lady Drummond. An acute observer would have s