Consequently he was not surprised, nor did he appreciate the honor conferred upon him, when the only surviving daughter of a well-connected country gentleman accepted his offer of marriage. True, the war had reduced her already impoverished father almost to penury, and in addition both her brothers had been killed in action early in the war, so that when she accepted him she felt that she did not now much care what became of her. Her mother had been dead many years, and her father she literally worshipped. What she never admitted, even to herself, though in her heart she knew it to be the truth, was that by marrying Henry Hartsilver she would be able to provide her father with a comfortable income in his declining years. And since his sons’ death he had aged very rapidly. Hartsilver was now in his forty-sixth year, his wife just seven-and-twenty. They had no children, but that did not prevent Hartsilver’s everlasting complaint to his wife that he considered himself deeply aggrieved at the Government’s neglect in failing to confer a title upon him. “Just think, my dear,” he had said to her more than once, “what you would feel like if I made you ‘my lady!’ Shouldn’t we be able to crow it over our friends, eh? And to think of the sums I gave to war charities! Well, we must live in hope!” Fortunately his wife’s tact, possibly also the sense of humor which she possessed, prevented her from becoming annoyed with him when he spoke like that, and making the sarcastic rejoinder which she sometimes longed to utter. Though she could not accuse herself of having married him for his money, that being the last thing she cared about, she yet felt that she had in a way married him under false pretenses, for certainly she knew that, but for her anxiety to add to her father’s happiness and comfort, this common, self-satisfied, and self-righteous person was one of the last men she would have linked herself to for life. Presently he spoke again. “You know, my dear Cora,” he said, linking his fingers across his ample chest, “although of course, it distresses me that you should grieve for this man Lethbridge, yet I don’t quite appreciate your feeling what I can only suppose is a sort of affection for the fellow--you, a married woman. Somehow it seems--it seems not quite the right thing. A woman, when she marries, should have no thought for other men, at least of all thoughts of a--er--friendly nature. Now, consider for a moment, and tell me if your better nature does not tell you so itself.” Cora Hartsilver winced, but her husband did not notice it. He did notice, however, when a moment later she smiled. “You seem amused, my dear,” he said dryly. “May I ask what amuses you?” “Oh nothing, Henry, nothing at all,” she answered quickly, then bit her lip. “It was only something I happened to think of just then.”