Regiment, had been deprived of his distinction on
account of circumstances recently brought to light. After that,
no need to ask why Val should have had a dagger in his hand! A
jury who had known Val and his father before him were not anxious
to press the case; and perhaps even the coroner was secretly
grateful for evidence which spared him the pain of calling Mr.
Stafford.

Except in Chilmark, the scandal scarcely ran its nine days, but
there of course it raged like a fire, and no one was much
surprised when the vicar resigned his living and crept away to a
bed-sittingroom in Museum Street, a broken old man, to spend the
brief remainder of his life among black letter texts and
incunabula. He could have borne any sin in the Decalogue less
hardly than a breach of the military oath. He stopped Isabel,
Rowsley, Lawrence himself when they tried to plead for Val. "I
am not angry," he said feebly. "If my son were alive I wouldn't
shut my door on him. But it's better as it is." He even tried to
persuade Isabel to break with Lawrence. "Captain Hyde is an
honourable man and no doubt considers himself bound to you, so
you mustn't wait for him to release himself. It is very sad for
you, my dear, but you belong to a disgraced family now and you
must suffer with the rest of us." Isabel agreed, and returned
her engagement ring. Followed a rather fiery scene, in which
Lawrence lost his temper, and Isabel wept: and finally Mr.
Stafford, finding Lawrence obdurate, broke down and owned that
his one last wish was to see his daughter happily married. He
refused to take her to Bloomsbury. She stayed with Rowsley or at
the Castle till Lawrence brought her to Farringay.

So there were changes at Chilmark, for the parish went to a
hot-tempered Welshman with a wife and six children, and Wanhope was
let to an American steel magnate, and Mrs. Jack Bendish, always
mischievous when she was unhappy, embroiled them with each other
first and then quarrelled with both. Yes, Wanhope was let: a
fortnight after Val's death Major Clowes went by car to Cornwall
with his wife for a change of air after the shock. He was
reported to have stood the journey very well, but Laura's letters
were not expansive.

Nor was Isabel: nor any other of those who had been eyewitnesses
of the tragedy at Wanhope. The memory of it cast a shadow and a
silence. Lawrence had never discussed it with Isabel; nor with
Selincourt, except in a hurried whispered in