Love cannot be forced, and I'll not marry where I do not love!" "You don't," said Colonel Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else?
What does that colour mean, Jacqueline?
Don't stammer! Speak out!" But Jacqueline, standing by the old leather chair, bowed her head upon its high green back, and neither could nor would "speak out." The two men, grey and withered, obstinate and imperious in a day and generation that subordinated youth to the councils of the old, gazed at their niece with perplexity and anger.

With the simpler of the two the perplexity was the greater, with the other anger.

A fear was knocking at Major Churchill's heart.

He would not admit it, strove not to listen to it, or to listen with contemptuous incredulity.

"It's not possible," he said to himself.