“Has it never occurred to you that Stella and John may have fallen in love with each other--with the ghastly barrier of the wife between them?” The two old people looked at him wide-eyed and drooping-mouthed. That Stellamaris, their fragile, impalpable child of mystery, more precious to them than a child of their own bodies, over whom they might have quarrelled--that Stellamaris should be a grown woman, capable of a grown woman's passions, was a proposition bewilderingly preposterous. Sir Oliver found speech first. “Stella in love with John? It 's absurd; it's ludicrous. Why, bless my soul! you might just as well say she was in love with me! It's nonsense--ridiculous nonsense.” He walked up and down beside the dining-room table, with arms outstretched, shaking his thin hands in protest. Lady Blount, her elbow resting on the table, looked at Walter. “The barrier of the wife? Who could have told her?” “John himself.” “How much?” “I don't know.” Sir Oliver brought himself to an abrupt standstill by the side of his wife. “He ought n't to have done anything of the kind. Such things are not fit for her to hear.” “That's the dreadful mistake we've made all along, my dear Oliver,” said Herold, sadly; and he disclosed to them probabilities of which they had not dreamed. Lady Blount began to cry silently, and her husband laid his hand on her shoulder. She put up her own and clasped it. They looked very forlorn, robbed of the darling they loved. The new Stellamaris was alien to their conservatism. They did not know her. They were lost. Like children they clasped hands, and their hearts were united at last in common dismay. Herold turned and looked out of the window. Presently he said: “She 's in the garden. I 'll go and talk to her, if she will let me.” “Do, Walter dear. Try to make her speak. It's that awful silence that we can't bear.” “She has always been devilish fond of you,” said Sir Oliver. Herold went out and came upon her, escorted by Constable, in a path bordered on each side by Canterbury bells and fox-gloves and sweet-william. She drew herself up as he approached, and looked at him like some wraith or White Lady caught in the daylight, with no gleam of welcome in her glance. The old dog, however, pushed by her to greet Herold, whom he held in vast approbation. Then, aware of being relieved from duty, he wandered down the path, where he lay down and, like a kindly elder, suffered the frisky impudence of a stray kitten of the household. “I suppose they 've sent for you because they think I am ill,” Stella began suspiciously. “You are ill, dearest,” he replied in a quiet voice, “and it's causing us all very deep grief.” “I'm not ill,” she retorted. “But every one's worrying me. I wish you would tell them to leave me alone.” He took a nerveless, unresponsive hand and put it to his lips. “Stellamaris, Stella darling, don't you know how we all love you? How we would give everything, life itself, to make you happy?”