Claude groaned. “So would her father if you met him. A fearful old dreamer. I coach with him in Political Science. He’s considered a great swell; I was told I was lucky to get him; but I can’t make head or tail of him or his books. His daughter has just his absent eye.” “Poor things,” said Mrs. Bellairs, sleepily. “And poor Mrs. Oliver and the Dean. I wonder how long these unfortunate people are staying, and if we ought to ask them over one day?” But none of her children appeared to think they ought. Even Molly, always loyal, always hospitable, always generous, didn’t think so. For stronger in Molly’s child-like soul than even her loyalty and her hospitality, and her generosity, was her moral sense, and this was questioning, shamefacedly, reluctantly, whether these friends of Eddy’s were really “good.” So they didn’t ask them over. CHAPTER VIII. THE VISITORS GO. Next morning Eileen got a letter. She read it before breakfast, turned rather paler, and looked up at Eddy as if she was trying to bring her mind back from a great distance. In her eyes was fear, and that look of brooding, soft pity that he had learnt to associate with one only of Eileen’s friends. She said, “Hugh’s ill,” frowning at him absently, and added, “I must go to him, this morning. He’s alone,” and Eddy remembered a paragraph he had seen in the _Morning Post_ about Lady Dorothy Datcherd and the Riviera. Lady Dorothy never stayed with Datcherd when he was ill. Periodically his lungs got much worse, and he had to lie up, and he hated that. “Does he write himself?” Arnold asked. He was fond of Hugh Datcherd. “Yes--oh, he doesn’t say he’s ill, he never will, but I know it by his writing--I must go by the next train, I’m afraid”; she remembered to turn to Mrs. Oliver and speak apologetically. “I’m very sorry to be so sudden.” “We are so sorry for the cause,” said Mrs. Oliver, courteously. “Is it your brother?” (Surely it wouldn’t be her husband, in the circumstances?) “It is not,” said Eileen, still abstracted. “It’s a friend. He’s alone, and consumptive, and if he’s not looked after he destroys himself doing quite mad things. His wife’s gone away.” Mrs. Oliver became a shade less sympathetic. It was a pity it was not a brother, which would have been more natural. However, Mrs. Le Moine was, of course, a married woman, though under curious circumstances. She began to discuss trains, and the pony-carriage, and sandwiches. Eddy explained afterwards while Eileen was upstairs. “It’s Hugh Datcherd, a great friend of hers; poor chap, his lungs are frightfully gone, I’m afraid. He’s an extraordinarily interesting and capable man; runs an enormous settlement in North-East London, and has any number of different social schemes all over the place. He edits _Further_--do you ever see it, father?” “_Further?_ Yes, it’s been brought to my notice once or twice. It goes a good way ‘further’ than even our poor heretical deans, doesn’t it?”