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Not the ethical, still less the social aspects of the drama affected her, but only its human ones. These dear people had suffered, and she hadn't known it. They suffered still. She enclosed them in arms of compassion. If to the pure all things are pure, Felicia Verity's purity at this juncture radiantly stood the test. And that, not through puritanical shutting of the eyes or juggling with fact.

She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and felt very grateful to them. Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly upon their feet.

According to Verity's accounts it was a common and every day occurrence for a house-breaker to force an entrance, murder the occupants, and depart, leaving a case to baffle the police until some amateur detective turned up and solved the mystery. "Has it ever struck you that the hostel would be a very easy place to burgle?" asked Fil.

From that day they were the best of friends, and he was Verity's favourite playmate. On Sunday afternoons he took her out to feed the ducks in St. James's Park, or to watch the boys sail their boats on the pond in Kensington Gardens. He was only a poor art student, but he would forego a meal cheerfully to provide some little treat for his protegee.

The crown might be heavy; but she had strangely ceased to desire to be rid of it, beginning, indeed, to find its weight oddly satisfying, even, it may be asserted, trenching on the exquisite. And, with this altered attitude, a freedom of spirit, greater than she had enjoyed since the commencement of the whole astonishing episode, since before her cousin Tom Verity's visit in fact, came upon her.

The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest notice, and make unholy play with them! To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat, indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.

The conversation turned on Cedric Templeton, and Malcolm asked Verity if she could transform the lumber-room into a bedroom for two or three nights for the use of his friend. This she at once cheerfully undertook to do, and promised to have it ready by the following evening, and then he informed them of his intended visit to Staplegrove. Verity's eyes at once challenged her husband.

Then his glance met Charles Verity's, held it in silent interchange of friendship needing no words to declare its quality or depth; and he turned away abruptly, making for the inside of the waiting omnibus cavernous in the semi-darkness distributing largesse to all and sundry as he went.

He was quite willing to accompany Verity to the bank next morning; a pleasant-spoken manager sighed his relief when the visitors were gone, and he was free to look at the item "bills discounted" on Verity's page in the ledger.

In the shrubberies robins sang, shrilly sweet. A murmur of waves, breaking at the back of the Bar, hung in the chill, moist, windless air. Presently a handbarrow rumbled and creaked, as West the head gardener, last surviving relic of Thomas Clarkson Verity's reign wheeled it from beneath the ilex trees towards the battery, leaving dark smudgy tracks upon the spangled turf.