"I am afraid you are right, dear, about Stephen.

He certainly hasn't been like himself for some time.

I have felt really anxious, I suppose it was the war." While the war had lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course of her family affairs.

For the past two years she had refused to think of it except under pressure; and then she recalled it only as the occasion when Victoria and Stephen had been in France, and poor Peyton in a training camp.

Her feeling had been violent, but entirely personal, while Mr.Culpeper, who possessed the martial patriotism characteristic of Virginians of his class and generation, had been animated by the sacrificial spirit of a hero.
"Oh, Stephen is all right," declared Peyton, who felt impelled to take the side of his brother in a family discussion.