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 to restraint, and steeled her to endure. With an unconscious shrug she remained silent.

But Judy's keen eyes had been on her, and both her natural sympathy and the experience of her own heart allowed her to interpret pretty well. She saw that for Joy's sake—either now or hereafter—some opposition to the Colonel's idea was necessary. She had noticed the settled look—it had not yet become a frown—which came over his face when his wife spoke of his looking at Joy. In just such moments and on subjects as this it is that a father's and a mother's ideas join issue. Whilst the mother expects the singling out of the daughter for devotion, the father's first impulse is to resent it. Colonel Ogilvie's resentment had all his life been habitually expressed with force and rapidity; even in a tender matter of this kind the habit unconsciously worked.

"All the more reason, Sarah, for his being candid about himself. For my own part I can understand one attitude or the other; but certainly not both at once!"

Joy began to get seriously alarmed. The mere use of her mother's formal name was a danger-signal of rare use. By its light she could realise that her father had what he considered in his own mind to be a real cause of complaint. She did not like to speak herself; she feared that just at present it might complicate matters. So she looked over appealing at Judy, who understood and spoke:

"What two attitudes? I'm afraid I for one, don't understand. You are talking in riddles to-night!" She spoke in a gay debonnair manner so like her usual self that her brother-in-law was unsuspicious of any underlying intent of opposition. This was just the opportunity for which he was waiting. With a sardonic smile he went on, singling out Joy as before:

"Your mother, my dear, has told us one of them. Perhaps the young man did look at you. There's little wonder in that. Were I a young man and a stranger I should look