e to be the case."

She addressed herself to explicit statement. "I believe Gwen is acting
under an unselfish impulse, and I do not believe in unselfish impulses.
If a girl is to run counter to the wishes of her parents, and to obvious
common sense, at least let her impulse be a selfish one. Let her act
entirely for her own sake. Gwen made your son's acquaintance under
peculiar circumstances--romantic circumstances--and, as I know,
instantly saw that his eyesight might be destroyed and that the blame
would rest with her family...."

"No, L-Lady Ancester"--he stumbled somehow over the name, for no
apparent reason--"I deny that. I protest against it...."

"We need not settle that point. Your feeling is a generous one. But do
let us keep to Gwen and Adrian." Her ladyship went on to develop her
view of the case, not at all illogically. Her objection to the marriage
turned entirely on Adrian's blindness--had not a particle of personal
feeling in it. On the contrary, she and her husband saw every reason to
believe that the young man, with eyes in his head, would have met with a
most affectionate welcome as a son-in-law. This applied especially to
the Earl, who, of course, had seen more of Adrian than herself. He had,
in fact, conceived an extraordinary _entichement_ for him; so much so
that he would sooner, for his own sake purely, that the marriage should
come off, as the blindness would affect him very little. But his duty to
his daughter remained exactly the same. If there was the slightest
reason to suppose that Gwen was immolating herself as a
sacrifice--something was implied of an analogy in the case of Jephtha's
daughter, but not pressed home owing to obvious weak points--he had no
choice, and she had no choice, but to protect the victim from herself.
If they did not do so, what was there to prevent an irrevocable step
being taken which might easily lead to disastrous consequences for both?
"You must see," said Gwen's mother very earnestly, "that if my daughter
is acting, as my husband and I suppose, from a Quixotic desire to make
up to your son for the terrible injury we have done him ... No protests,
please!... it is our business to protect her from the consequences of
her own rashness--to stand between her and a possible lifelong
unhappiness!"

"But what," said the perplexed Baronet, "can _I_ do?" A reasonable
question!

"If you can do nothing, no one can. The Earl and myself are so
handicapped by our sense of