"Look here," he said. "I investigated her thoroughly at luncheon, and I
don't often make a mistake, do I?"

"No," said Anne. "Well--?"

"Well, she appeared to me to have some particular quality of
sweetness--you were right about her looking like an angel--and I think
she has got an angel's nature more or less; and when people are really
like that there is some one up above looks after them, and I don't think
we need worry much--you and I."

"Dear old Crow!" said Anne; "you do comfort me. But all the same, angel
or not, Hector is so attractive--and he is a man, you know, not one of
these anæmic, artistic, æsthetic things we see about so often now; and
thrown together like that--how on earth will they be able to help
themselves?"

The Crow was silent.

"You see," she continued, "beyond Morella, who is too absolutely
unalluring and respectable to come to harm anywhere, and Miss Linwood,
who only cares for bridge, there will hardly be another woman in the
house who has not got a lover, and the atmosphere of those things is
catching--don't you think so?"

"It is nature," said Colonel Lowerby. "A woman in possession of her
health and faculties requires a mate, and when her husband is attending
to sport or some other man's wife, she is bound to find one somewhere. I
don't blame the poor things."