Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied, quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she had ample time before her still in relation to all that. Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever deliberations their elders and betters had in hand. Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent. Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then-- "A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer, give you?--A good one, I hope?" A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply: "One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached." "Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic, I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous." "And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the wicked things he said." This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm. "Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where is Miss Damaris?" "Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?" "No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first." "Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it, Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."