She knew all about little Alice, had seen her once, and had recognised her at a glance as Royal's child, the child for which, with her passionate love for the regiment, she felt herself in part responsible. On the same occasion she had seen Ruth's other babies and their grandfather with them--that troubadour who forty years before had swept the harp of her life to sudden and elusive music. "I think that'll be all right now, Ruth," she said with a re-assuring look. "I'm going to call you that now if I may. I'll come round and let you know directly I know myself." Ruth retired with haunted eyes. She guessed rather than knew the forces that were gathering against her, and the strength of them. Outside in the porch she met Lady Augusta with her mane of thick bobbed white hair and rosy face; and on the cliff, as she walked home, other ladies of the Committee and the Reverend Spink. How hard they looked and how complacent! ... Mrs. Lewknor put the case before her committee, telling them just as much as she thought it good for them to know. There was of course the inevitable trouble about little Alice. "We don't even know for certain that she is the child of the man the mother afterwards married," objected Lady Augusta Willcocks in her worst manner. "She mayn't be a soldier's child at all." Mrs. Lewknor turned in her lips. "Our business surely is to support the women and children while the men are away fighting our battles," she said. "Need we form ourselves into a private enquiry office?" asked Mrs. Trupp quietly. The old lady's eyes flashed. Mrs. Trupp of course didn't care. Mrs. Trupp never went to church. "Putting a premium on immorality!" she cried with bitter laughter--"as usual." "We must look a little into character surely, Mrs. Lewknor," said a honied virgin from St. Michael's. "I'll go bail for this woman's character," answered Mrs. Lewknor, flashing in her turn. "I believe she _is_ more respectable than she used to be," said a dull spinster with a dogged eye. "_Damn_ respectability," thought Mrs. Lewknor, but she said, "Are we to deprive this child of bread in the name of respectability? Whatever else she is she's a child of the Empire." Then the Reverend Spink spoke. He and Lady Augusta Willcocks were there to represent the point of view of the Church. He spoke quietly, his eyes down, and lips compressed, mock-meekly aware of the dramatic significance of his words. "Perhaps I ought to tell the committee that the man this woman is now living with is not her husband." The silence that greeted this announcement was all that the reverend gentleman could have desired. It was only broken by the loud triumphant cry of the Lady Augusta Willcocks. "Then all _four_ children are illegitimate!" "Oh, that _would_ be joyful!" cried Mrs. Lewknor with a little titter. It was the great moment of the Reverend Spink's life.