CHAPTER VII. AN ELDERLY CHAMPION While Herbert Hemming tried to ease the bitterness of his heart and forget the injustice that had been done him, in new scenes and amid new companions, Miss Travers suffered at home. Her lover had scarcely left the house before misgivings tore her. Now, alone and shaken with grief, she saw upon what treasonable foundation she had accused an honourable man of--she hardly knew what. Why had he listened to her? Why had he not laughed, and kissed away her awful, hysterical foolishness? Then she remembered how she had repulsed his caress, and there in the narrow, heavily furnished drawing-room she leaned her head upon her arms and prayed. Half an hour later she was startled by the ringing of the door-bell, and hastened to her own room. The caller was an elderly bachelor brother of her mother's--a man with a small income, a taste for bridge, and tongue and ears for gossip. His visits were always welcome to Mrs. Travers. Mrs. Travers was a stout lady much given to family prayers, scandal, and disputes with servants. As the widow of a bishop she felt that she filled, in the being of the nation, a somewhat similar position to that occupied by Westminster Abbey. She doted on all those in temporal and spiritual authority, almost to the inclusion of curates and subalterns,--if they had expectations. Once upon a time, seeing nothing larger in sight for her daughter, she had been Herbert Hemming's motherly friend. Then she had heard from Mr. Penthouse (who was poor and dissipated, and might some day become a baronet) that Hemming's fortune was not nearly so large as people supposed. At first she had watched the change in her daughter, under Penthouse's influence, with vague alarm; but a suspicion of more eligible suitors in the offing stilled her fears. The hints which her pleasing nephew brought to her, of Hemming's double life, inflamed her righteous anger against the quiet captain. Had her daughter's lover been the master of five thousand a year she would have admonished Penthouse to keep silence concerning the affairs of his superiors. As it was, she thought her righteous indignation quite genuine, for few people of her kind know the full extent of their respectable wickedness. Then had come news, through her daughter, of Hemming's retirement from the army and entrance into journalism. Molly had mentioned it, very quietly, one morning at breakfast. Then had come Hemming himself, and with vast satisfaction she had heard him leave the house without any bright laughter at the door. And just as she had determined to descend and soothe Molly with words of pious comfort, her brother had arrived.