"So was Wellington when he found he had won the battle of Waterloo." Francis gathered up his letters and the daily paper, a Conservative organ, together with the _Church Times_, and turned to Serge. "If you can give me a moment or two," he said, "I should like your opinion on a matter of some importance." "Delighted," answered Serge. Five minutes later Serge knocked at the study door, went in, and found his father at his desk writing a letter. Francis laid down his pen and turned. "I want your opinion as a man of the world. I find myself in a situation with which I am not competent to deal, and yet I must deal with it." "My experience is," said Serge, "that most problems solve themselves." "This is a moral problem." "Moral problems crumble away under the pressure of time more easily than any others." Francis was not encouraged. However, he went on: "Frederic . . ." "Ah! I thought it must be about Frederic." "Frederic has proposed to and been accepted by Jessie Clibran-Bell." "A very estimable young woman, though she has no sense of humour." "Frederic is also entangled . . ." "With the daughter of a lodging-house keeper." "You knew that?" "Yes. I knew that." "You can imagine then what pain and sorrow this must have caused me." "Yes. It is always distressing to find fiction overturned by facts." "You do not condemn Frederic?" "It is surely one of the first principles of religion to condemn nobody." "True. True. But one must not encourage immorality." "Nothing encourages immorality so much as condemnation and prohibition." "Is that how men of the world think of it?" "I don't know. It is how I think of it." Francis combed his fingers through his beard. "Then . . . Then, what am I to do?" "It seems to me that the difficulty has already solved itself. Miss Clibran-Bell is in love with Frederic. She will probably make him a good wife. Frederic could not possibly marry the other girl. It would destroy all her chances of marrying a man whom she could love, honour and respect . . ." "But he has destroyed her chances." "Not at all. She will be a soberer, a better and a more sympathetic woman after this experience, if she is helped through it and treated with decent human feeling . . . Frederic is finished as far as she is concerned." "I told Frederic he must leave my house. I went back on it." "That was just as well. It would have made my mother very unhappy and caused a bitter scandal in your parish. These things are nobody's affair until they are everybody's affair. The only sane course to pursue is to see that they do not become everybody's affair!" "What do you suggest?"