He walked up and down beside the dining-room table, with arms outstretched, shaking his thin hands in protest.
Lady Blount, her elbow resting on the table, looked at Walter.
“The barrier of the wife? Who could have told her?”
“John himself.”
“How much?”
“I don't know.”
Sir Oliver brought himself to an abrupt standstill by the side of his wife.
“He ought n't to have done anything of the kind. Such things are not fit for her to hear.”
“That's the dreadful mistake we've made all along, my dear Oliver,” said Herold, sadly; and he disclosed to them probabilities of which they had not dreamed.
Lady Blount began to cry silently, and her husband laid his hand on her shoulder. She put up her own and clasped it. They looked very forlorn, robbed of the darling they loved. The new Stellamaris was alien to their conservatism. They did not know her. They were lost. Like children they clasped hands, and their hearts were united at last in common dismay.