ference was in the placing of them; and
it was this difference that was the most horrible point. The fatal age
in Mrs. Brett's hands was--not past, no, for here SHE was. But she
might have died when she was twenty-one. Twenty-three seemed to be the
utmost span. She was twenty-four, you know.

"I have said that I am a weak man. And you will have good proof of
that directly. Yet I showed a certain amount of strength that
day--yes, even on that day which has humiliated and saddened the rest
of my life. Neither my face nor my voice betrayed me when in the palms
of Dorothy Elbourn I was again confronted with those same signs. She
was all for knowing the future, poor child! I believe I told her all
manner of things that were to be. And she had no future--none, none in
THIS world--except--

"And then, while I talked, there came to me suddenly a suspicion. I
wondered it hadn't come before. You guess what it was? It made me
feel very cold and strange. I went on talking. But, also, I went
on--quite separately--thinking. The suspicion wasn't a certainty.
This mother and daughter were always together. What was to befall the
one might anywhere--anywhere--befall the other. But a like fate, in an
equally near future, was in store for that other lady. The coincidence
was curious, very. Here we all were together--here, they and I--I who
was narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to
suffer. Oh, there was an inference to be drawn. Not a sure inference,
I told myself. And always I was talking, talking, and the train was
swinging and swaying noisily along--to what? It was a fast train. Our
carriage was near the engine. I was talking loudly. Full well I had
known what I should see in the colonel's hands. I told myself I had
not known. I told myself that even now the thing I dreaded was not
sure to be. Don't think I was dreading it for myself. I wasn't so
'lamentable' as all that--now. It was only of them that I
thought--only for them. I hurried over the colonel's character and
career; I was perfunctory. It was Brett's hands that I wanted. THEY
were the hands that mattered. If THEY had the marks-- Remember, Brett
was to start for India in the coming week, his wife was to remain in
England. They would be apart. Therefore--

"And the marks were there. And I did nothing--nothing but hold forth
on the subtleties of Brett's character. There was a thing for me to
do. I wanted to do