that day without any final injunctions to occupy her mind, and
she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a privilege she did not enjoy
undisturbed when he was present; for the warrior hated that weakness,
and did not care to hide his contempt for it.

Of the three sisters, the wife of the Major was, oddly enough, the one
who was least inveterately solicitous of concealing the fact of her
parentage. Reticence, of course, she had to study with the rest; the
Major was a walking book of reticence and the observances; he professed,
also, in company with herself alone, to have had much trouble in
drilling her to mark and properly preserve them. She had no desire to
speak of her birthplace. But, for some reason or other, she did not
share her hero's rather petulant anxiety to keep the curtain nailed down
on that part of her life which preceded her entry into the ranks of the
Royal Marines. Some might have thought that those fair large blue eyes
of hers wandered now and then in pleasant unambitious walks behind
the curtain, and toyed with little flowers of palest memory. Utterly
tasteless, totally wanting in discernment, not to say gratitude, the
Major could not presume her to be; and yet his wits perceived that
her answers and the conduct she shaped in accordance with his repeated
protests and long-reaching apprehensions of what he called danger,
betrayed acquiescent obedience more than the connubial sympathy due to
him. Danger on the field the Major knew not of; he did not scruple to
name the word in relation to his wife. For, as he told her, should he,
some day, as in the chapter of accidents might occur, sally into the
street a Knight Companion of the Bath and become known to men as Sir
Maxwell Strike, it would be decidedly disagreeable for him to be blown
upon by a wind from Lymport. Moreover she was the mother of a son. The
Major pointed out to her the duty she owed her offspring. Certainly the
protecting aegis of his rank and title would be over the lad, but she
might depend upon it any indiscretion of hers would damage him in his
future career, the Major assured her. Young Maxwell must be considered.

For all this, the mother and wife, when the black letter found them in
the morning at breakfast, had burst into a fit of grief, and faltered
that she wept for a father. Mrs. Andrew, to whom the letter was
addressed, had simply held the letter to her in a trembling hand. The
Major compared their behaviour, with marked enco