Couldn't be otherwise than charming if she tried," the doctor
said, reaching out his hand again to the decanter.

Mrs. Ormiston treated him to her little stare, and then looked round
the table, putting up one plump, bare arm as she pushed in a couple of
hairpins.

"Ah! but she's a real jewel of a child," she said audaciously. "She's
the comfort of my social existence. For she doesn't resemble me in the
least, and therefore my reputation's everlastingly safe, thanks to her.
Why, before the calumniating thought has had time to arise in your
mind, one look in that child's face will dissipate it, she's so
entirely the image of her father."

There was a momentary silence, but for the sobbing of the gale and
rattling of the casements. Then Captain Ormiston broke into a rather
loud laugh. Even if they sail near the wind, you must stand by the
women of your family.

"Come, that will do, I think, Ella," he said. "You won't beat that
triumphant bull in a hurry."

"But, my dear boy, so she is. Even at her present tender age, she's the
living picture of your brother William."

"Oh! poor William," Roger said hastily.

He turned to Mary Cathcart. The girl had blushed up to the roots of her
crisp, black hair. She did not clearly understand the other woman's
speech, nor did she wish to do so. She was admirably pure-minded. But
like all truly pure-minded persons, she carried a touchstone that made
her recoil, directly and instinctively, from that which was of doubtful
quality. The twinkle in Dr. Knott's gray eyes, as he sipped his port,
still more the tone of Roger Ormiston's laugh, she did understand
somehow. And this last jarred upon her cruelly. It opened the
flood-gates of doubt which Mary--like so many another woman in respect
of the man she loves--had striven very valiantly to keep shut. All
manner of hints as to his indiscretions, all manner of half-told tales
as to his debts, his extravagance, which rumour had conveyed to her
unwilling ears, seemed suddenly to gather weight and probability,
viewed in the moral light--so to speak--of that laugh. Great loves
mature and deepen under the action of sorrow and the necessity to
forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either
man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all,
feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary
turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain
labourer's family that had late