een--poor dears!"

Still there was silence.

"John! Are you thinking?"

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was
coming from the Colonel--to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he WAS thinking. Dolly was an imaginative woman, but
something told him that in this case she might not be riding past the
hounds.

Mrs. Ercott raised herself. He looked more good than ever; a little
perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the
wrinkles across his forehead.

"I'm very fond of Olive," he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows. In her heart there was just that
little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a
niece.

"No doubt," she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his
hand. In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another
hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said: "Look here, old girl!" and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking. Her thoughts were flat and rapid
like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which accompanies the
mental exercise of women with good hearts. Poor young man! And poor
Olive! But was a woman ever to be pitied, when she was so pretty as
that! Besides, when all was said and done, she had a fine-looking man
for husband; in Parliament, with a career, and fond of her--decidedly.
And their little house in London, so close to Westminster, was a
distinct dear; and nothing could be more charming than their cottage by
the river. Was Olive, then, to be pitied? And yet--she was not happy.
It was no good pretending that she was happy. All very well to say that
such things were within one's control, but if you read novels at all,
you knew they weren't. There was such a thing as incompatibility. Oh
yes! And there was the matter of difference in their ages! Olive was
twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two. And now this young Mark Lennan was
in love with her. What if she were in love with him! John would realize
then, perhaps, that the young flew to the young. For men--even the best,
like John, were funny! She would never dream of feeling for any of her
nephews as John clearly felt for Olive.

The Colonel's voice broke in on her thoughts.

"Nice young fellow--Lennan! Great pity! Better sheer off--if he's
getting--"

And, rather suddenly, she answered:

"Suppose he can't!"

"Can't?"

"Did you never hear of a 'grande passion'?"

The Colonel rose on h