Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she
went home to luncheon. "If she feels like that now," she commented,
"what _will_ she say when she knows all?--if she ever has to know it."

"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.

"It doesn't make any difference in _her_."

Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know
anything about it."

"I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple declared, with some asperity, "to
see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to
prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change,
it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the
type to be--to be perfected through suffering."

"Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head inclined to one side. "That might
be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his
place in the Sussex Rangers."

"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"

"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."

"Well, I never did! If that's the British army--"

"The British army is a very complicated institution. It fills a lot of
different functions, and it's a lot of different things. It's one thing