She was of a practical limited nature; she saw very clearly what she saw, but she walked in blinkers, and had neither comprehension of nor sympathy with those of a wider vision.

She was at this time a woman of forty, comfortable to look upon and the wife of Mr.Robert Pettifer, the head of the well-known firm of solicitors, Pettifer, Gryll and Musgrave.

Mrs.Pettifer had very little patience to spare for the idiosyncrasies of her brother, though she owed him a good deal more than patience.

For at the time, some twenty years before, when she had married Robert Pettifer, then merely a junior partner of the firm, Harold Hazlewood had alone stood by her.

To the rest of the family she was throwing herself away; to her brother Harold she was doing a fine thing, not because it was a fine thing but because it was an exceptional thing.