So far as surface values went, it was a rebuke to Mary. But Mary’s values are not surface ones, and she is quite clear-headed about them. And I believe that Claire herself, in a way, understood better than she would let herself appear to understand. She has far too much intuition not to know that Bill and Mrs. Harter had been involved, together, in an adventure of real spiritual and emotional significance, and that it was Bill who had been allowed the easy way out and Mrs. Harter who, as Mary said, had been left to face the music alone. Claire understood, to a certain extent. But she had always disliked Mrs. Harter, and it was not in her to accord to a woman she disliked the recognition of spiritual and emotional significance. Lady Annabel, who bent her head in acquiescence to the “de mortuis” clause, was on another plane of vision altogether. She really _couldn’t_ see any but the surface values. Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter had sinned; and she was quite prepared to judge and condemn them both. But Captain Patch was dead, and so he could no more be spoken of except with pity and regret. Mrs. Harter, who was still alive, retained full responsibility for everything. “It is a frightful affair altogether,” said Lady Annabel, “to have caused the death of a young man like that, in the very midst of the errors into which she had led him, without any time for preparation.... Well, I suppose she is satisfied now.” Even Mary did not again attempt to move her from that. The Kendals, who will undoubtedly _parler pour ne rien dire_ round the whole subject at frequent intervals for the rest of their lives, nevertheless showed a great deal of warm feeling, so that one felt their narrow-mindedness to be oddly neutralized by their kindheartedness. They had been fond of Bill Patch, and the girls, at least, in their strangely prolonged youthfulness of outlook, had never seen beyond the “flirtation-with-a-married-woman” indictment. Mumma herself, in all sincerity, cried heartily and said that in the grave all things were forgotten. It will be no thanks to her if they are, however. She will always see the whole thing in terms of a sensational scandal, and it is thus that she will always show it to others. And in the end it is quite probable that the four Kendal girls will dismiss the subject, in their rather solemn way, by the formula: “Mumma says she would rather that we did not talk about it.” The lowest level of all was that upon which Mr. and Mrs. Leeds took--it could scarcely be called their stand, but their very fleeting and transitory foothold. When they had accorded to death the conventional tributes of an instant of seriousness, a hastily-made-up face of shocked dismay, and a meaningless ejaculation or two, they were inclined to facetiousness. They enjoyed the scandal of it all with that instinctive vulgarity of outlook that characterizes a certain type of unimaginative mind.