“It's too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don't understand anything at all about it. I don't understand what Walter means. And all that old beastly story revived. It's damnable!” He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount, too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which, as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim, standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably. “O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this! Walter should n't have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What are we to do!” And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling of pity upon the bowed gray heads. [Illustration: 0350] Once,--was it yesterday or weeks or months or years ago? She could not tell,--but once, to her later pain and remorse, she had commanded, and they had obeyed; now she knew that she had to comfort, protect, determine. And in a bewildering flash came the revelation that knowledge was a weapon not only to fight her own way through the evil of the world, but to defend the defenceless. “I wish Walter was here,” she whispered, her hand against the withered, wet cheek. “Why Walter, dear?” “He is strong and true,” said Stellamaris. “Why not John, darling?” Yes, why not John? Stella drew a sharp breath. Sir Oliver saved her an answer. “John has enough to look to, poor chap. He has got everything about his ears. Stella's right. We want Walter. He's young. He's a good fellow, is Walter. I must be getting old, my dear,--” He raised his face, and, with a sudden forlorn hope of dignity, twirled his white moustache,--“A year ago I should n't have wanted Walter or anybody. It 's only you, my child, that your aunt and I are thinking of. We've tried to do our duty by you, have n't we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You 're the only thing in the world left to us. It is n't our fault that you are drawn into this ghastliness. It is n't, God knows it is n't. Only, my dear,”--there was a catch in his voice,--“you 're not able to bear it. For us old folks who have knocked about the world--well, we 're used to--to this sort of thing. I 've had to send men to the gallows in my time--once twenty men to be shot. The paltry fellows at the Colonial Office did n't see things as I did, but that's another matter. We 're used to these things, dear; we 're hardened--” “If I have got to live in the world, dear Excellency,” said Stella, feeling that there were some sort of flood-gates between the tumultuous flow of her being and the still waters of pity in which for the moment her consciousness acted, “it seems that I must get used to it, like every one else.”