n the fellow!" And there the
matter had rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering
a little which fellow it was that he had damned. That indeed was the
trouble. If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and had
liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had not found
Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her husband's niece
rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those three had
been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it would have been so
much simpler for all concerned. It was the discovery that there was
a personal equation in such matters, instead of just a simple rule of
three, which disorganized the Colonel and made him almost angry; which
depressed Mrs. Ercott and made her almost silent.... These two good
souls had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from birth.
Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or according to
formal codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the
Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really
shaken; he simply could not get out of his head the sight of those two
young people sitting side by side, nor the tone of Olive's voice, when
she had repeated his regrettable words about happiness at home.

If only the thing had not been so human! If only she had been someone
else's niece, it would clearly have been her duty to remain unhappy. As
it was, the more he thought, the less he knew what to think. A man who
had never had any balance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic
condition of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled social
status--deeming Society in fact rather a bore--he did not unduly
exaggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he honestly
believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if she did not
succeed in remaining true to 'that great black chap,' as he secretly
called Cramier. His feeling was simply that it was an awful pity; a sort
of unhappy conviction that it was not like the women of his family to
fall upon such ways; that his dead brother would turn in his grave; in
two words that it was 'not done.' Yet he was by no means of those who,
giving latitude to women in general, fall with whips on those of their
own family who take it. On the contrary, believing that 'Woman in
general' should be stainless to the world's eye, he was inclined to make
allowance for any individual woman that he knew