"Who is she?" asked Jeremy's mother quite quietly.
Again Barlow felt the solid earth slipping.
"You know?" he asked.
"Two boxes have come, and Bonus brought them," she answered. "I told him only one was Jeremy's, and he said very like, but that the other belonged to his wife."
"It's true. Wonders never cease in our family—well ordered though it may be. The world's to the young, and a proper mess they seem likely to make of it. You always thought that marriage would save or settle Jeremy, and we can only pray that it will save him."
Mrs. Huxam was pale. She mopped her face quietly with a white handkerchief and remained silent.
"Don't you take on," he begged. "Don't let it shake you."
"Does anything shake me?" she asked. "What right should I have to stand with the Chosen Few, Barlow Huxam, if anything shook me? It's the Lord's will and that's enough."
"There!" he said, "faltering creature that I am, I never thought of that."
"No—nor yet Jeremy. But a man don't marry a woman by chance. It had to be, and it is. And who is she?"