She strikes me, more and more, as extraordinary." A deeper shade, at the renewal of the word, had come into the Colonel's face.

"If they're each and all so extraordinary then, isn't that why one must just resign one's self to wash one's hands of them--to be lost ?" Her face, however, so met the question as if it were but a flicker of the old tone that their trouble had now become too real for--her charged eyes so betrayed the condition of her nerves that he stepped back, alertly enough, to firmer ground.

He had spoken before in this light of a plain man's vision, but he must be something more than a plain man now.

"Hasn't she then, Charlotte, always her husband-- ?" "To complain to?
She'd rather die." "Oh!"-- and Bob Assingham's face, at the vision of such extremities, lengthened for very docility.

"Hasn't she the Prince then ?" "For such matters?
Oh, he doesn't count." "I thought that was just what--as the basis of our agitation--he does do!" Mrs.Assingham, however, had her distinction ready.