stood Mina, who was
Cecily's friend? Yet at last a thought flashed into her mind and gave
her a weapon.

"Well, what did you come to London for?" she cried defiantly. "Why did
you come, unless you meant that too?"

Cecily started a little and lay back in her chair.

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured despondently. "He hates me, but if he's
offered Blent and me he'll--he'll take us both, Mina, you know he will."
An indignant rush of color came on her cheeks. "Oh, it's very easy for
you!"

In a difficulty of that sort it did not seem that even Mr Disney could
be of much avail.

"Oh, you Tristrams!" cried Mina in despair.

XIX

IN THE MATTER OF BLINKHAMPTON

Pity for the commander who, while engaging the enemy on his front with
valor and success, breaking his line and driving him from his position,
finds himself assailed in the rear by an unexpected or despised foe and
the prize of victory suddenly wrenched from him! His fate is more bitter
than if he had failed in his main encounter, his self-reproaches more
keen.

Major Duplay was awakening to the fact that this was his situation.
Triumph was not his although Harry Tristram had fled from the battle.
Iver's carefully guarded friendliness and the touch of motherly
compassion in his wife's manner, Mrs Trumbler's tacit request (conveyed
by a meek and Christian sympathy) that he should bow to the will of
Providence, Miss S.'s malicious questions as to where he meant to spend
the winter after leaving Merrion, told him the opinion of the world.
Janie Iver had begun to think flirtation wrong; and there was an
altogether new and remarkable self-assertion about Bob Broadley. The
last thing annoyed Duplay most. It is indeed absurd that a young man,
formerly of a commendable humility, should think a change of demeanor
justified merely because one young woman, herself insignificant, chooses
for reasons good or bad to favor him. Duplay assumed to despise Bob; it
is often better policy to despise people than to enter into competition
with them, and it is always rash to do both. These and other truths--as,
for example, that for some purposes it is better not to be
forty-four--the Major was learning. Was there any grain of comfort? It
lay in the fact that he was forty-four. A hypothetical, now impossible,
yet subtly soothing Major of thirty routed Bob Broadley and carried all
before him. In other words Duplay was driven back to the Last Ditch of
Consolation. What we co