....What help is there?
There is no help, for all these things are so.
A. C. Swinburne.
“Come over here, Judith, and I will show you something,” said Ernest Leuniger as he sat by the fire in the morning-room.
It was two days after Reuben’s departure for St. Baldwin’s, and Ernest had returned from the country that morning.
She went over to him, drawing a chair close to his. Judith was always very kind to him, and he admired her immensely, treating her at intervals with a sort of gallantry.
“Now look at me!” He had the solitaire board on his knee, and a little glass ball, with coloured threads spun into it, between his fingers.
“There, and there, and there!”
Judith bent forward dutifully, watching how he lifted the marbles, one after the other, from their holes.
“Don’t you see?”
He looked at her triumphantly, but a little irritated at her obtuseness.
“Oh, yes,” said Judith vaguely.