'It's well enough to send them a card now and then, but anything more than that--we must put our foot down. The Barmouths of all people! I declare it serves them right!' 'The affair seems to have resulted in serving everybody right,' he reflected. 'So I suppose it's all for the best.' 'Marriage is the point on which we must make a stand. After a short pause she added an inevitable qualification: 'Unless there are overwhelming reasons the other way. And this woman was never even supposed to be more than decently off.' 'The Barmouths are very much the old style. It was bad luck that she should happen on them.' 'Bad luck, George? It was Sarah Bonfill!' 'Bad luck for Mrs. Trevalla, I mean.' 'You take extraordinary views sometimes, George. Now I call it a Providence.' In face of a difference so irreconcilable Glentorly abandoned the argument. There were a few like him who harboured a shame-faced sympathy for Trix. They were awed into silence, and the sentence of condemnation passed unopposed. Yet there were regrets and longings in Mervyn's heart. Veiled under his dignified manner, censured by his cool judgment, hustled into the background by his resolute devotion to the Trans-Euphratic railway and other affairs of state, made to seem shameful by his determination to find a new ideal in a girl of Audrey Pollington's irreproachable stamp, they maintained an obstinate vitality, and, by a perverse turn of feeling, drew their strength from the very features in Trix and in Trix's behaviour which had incurred his severest censure while she was still his and with him.