I shrugged my shoulders. “Everything would be done kindly, no doubt.” “Not fair on the chap, either,” he remarked after some moments. I think that my mind supplied the unspoken part of his conversation quite successfully: he was picturing the household _à trois_; he himself was, in his mind’s eye, “the chap,” and under the circumstances he thought “the chap” ought not to be exposed to temptation. I agreed, but kept my agreement, and my understanding, to myself. “What appalling bad luck that poor little girl’s had!” “One of them had to have very bad luck,” I reminded him. “Sir Thomas contrived that.” He started a little. He had forgotten the exceedingly bad luck which once had threatened Miss Gladwin, the girl he had come to woo. The captain’s state of feeling was, in fact, fairly transparent. I was sorry for him--well, for all of them--because he certainly could not afford to offer his hand to Nettie Tyler. Somewhere on the way back from the home farm I lost Captain Spencer Fullard. Miss Tyler’s letters must have been concise; there was the gleam of a white frock, dashed here and there with splashes of black, in the park. Fullard said he wanted more exercise, and I arrived alone on the lawn, where my hostess sat beside the tea-table. Feeling guilty for another’s sin, as one often does, I approached shamefacedly. She gave me tea, and asked, with a businesslike abruptness which I recognised as inherited, “What are they saying about me?” That was Gladwin all over! To say not a word for twelve months, because for twelve months she had not cared; then to blurt it out! Because she wanted light? Obviously that was the reason--the sole reason. She had not cared before; now something had occurred to make her think, to make her care, to make the question of her dealings with Miss Tyler important. I might have pretended not to understand, but there was a luxury in dealing plainly with so fine a plain-dealer; I told her the truth without shuffling. “On the whole, it’s considered that you would be doing the handsome thing in giving her something,” I answered, sipping my tea. She appreciated the line I took. She had expected surprise and fencing; it amused and pleased her to meet with neither. She was in the mood (by the way, we could see the black-dashed white frock and Fullard’s manly figure a quarter of a mile away) to meet frankness with its fellow. “She never put in a word for me,” she said, smiling. “With father, I mean.” “She doesn’t understand business,” I pleaded. “I’ve been expected to sympathise with her bad luck!” So had I--by the captain, half-an-hour before. But I did not mention it. “The Bittleton Club thinks I ought to--to do something?” I laughed at her taking our club as the arbiter. She had infused a pretty irony into her question. “It does, Miss Gladwin.” My answer maintained the ironical note. “Then I will,” said she, with a highly delusive appearance of simplicity.