exclusively about the distant sails and the Red Sea littoral. When
he no longer joined us as we sat or walked together, I perceived
that his hostility was fixed and his parti pris. He was brimful of
compassion, but it was all for Cecily, none for the situation or for
me. (She would have marvelled, placidly, why he pitied her. I am
glad I can say that.) The primitive man in him rose up as Pope of
nature and excommunicated me as a creature recusant to her
functions. Then deliberately Dacres undertook an office of
consolation; and I fell to wondering, while Mrs. Morgan spoke her
convictions plainly out, how far an impulse of reparation for a
misfortune with which he had nothing to do might carry a man.

I began to watch the affair with an interest which even to me seemed
queer. It was not detached, but it was semi-detached, and, of
course, on the side for which I seem, in this history, to be
perpetually apologizing. With certain limitations it didn't matter
an atom whom Cecily married. So that he was sound and decent, with
reasonable prospects, her simple requirements and ours for her would
be quite met. There was the ghost of a consolation in that; one
needn't be anxious or exacting.

I could predict with a certain amount of confidence that in her
first season she would probably receive three or four proposals, any
one of which she might accept with as much propriety and
satisfaction as any other one. For Cecily it was so simple;
prearranged by nature like her digestion, one could not see any
logical basis for difficulties. A nice upstanding sapper, a dashing
Bengal Lancer--oh, I could think of half a dozen types that would
answer excellently. She was the kind of young person, and that was
the summing up of it, to marry a type and be typically happy. I