She knew herself false to the core, not quite a subject for the divorce court, but a creature whose good angel had long left her, shuddering and abhorrent. Mr. Piper had not forgotten Mrs. Dulcimer’s ideas about Captain Standish and Clementina, and when he saw the captain and sister-in-law together he was inclined to believe that there might be some foundation for that inveterate matchmaker’s fancy. The captain had a knack of being particularly attentive to Tina under Mr. Piper’s eye. And now autumn was approaching, the russet corn was cut in the wide shadowless fields, the ploughman’s white horses were seen moving slowly along the upland ridges, against a cool gray sky. Captain Standish went up into the wildest part of the moors for a fortnight’s grouse-shooting, and to everybody’s surprise came back to Great Yafford in three days. He rode over to the Park on the afternoon of his return, and found Bella alone, yawning over a novel. She started and dropped her book when the footman announced him, and changed from pale to red, and red to pale again. ‘You did not expect to see me so soon,’ said the captain, keeping her little cold hand in his. ‘No,’ she faltered, unable to say more. ‘You thought I should be able to endure a fortnight’s life without you. I was fool enough to think so too--and made all my arrangements for staying away till the 27th. But three days were quite enough. How pale and tired you look!’ ‘I have had nothing to do, and I suppose that is the most tiring thing in the world. Tina has gone home. I did not want Mr. Piper to think that she was going to live here always.’ ‘What does it matter what he thinks?’ said Captain Standish, with his supercilious smile. ‘Mr. Piper was only created to be useful to you and your relations. And so you have missed--Tina.’ ‘I have been very dull.’ ‘If you knew how desolate my life was in those three days you would pity me,’ said the captain, tenderly. ‘Yes, Isabel, you would pity me for being so weak that I cannot live without you, so miserably placed that I am obliged to hide my love.’ And then Captain Standish went on to tell his story; the old, old story, the familiar melody, subject to such endless variations, such kaleidoscopic distinctions without difference, and always coming to the same thing in the end. ‘We might have been happy had Providence willed it. Let us defy Providence, fling honour to the winds, and be happy in spite of fate.’