prided himself on being ready to believe anything at a moment’s notice, especially if it was the worst, and he called it having an open mind.  The girl was obviously the most spoilt of girls.  No one could help seeing that.  Her least wish seemed to be for the uncle a command that was not even to be talked about.  Yet the uncle was never openly affectionate to her.  It almost seemed as though she must have some secret hold over him, be in possession, perhaps, of some fact connected with a guilty past.  But then this girl and guilty pasts!  Why, from the look in her eyes she could never even have heard of such things.  Robin thought himself fairly experienced in knowledge of human nature, but he had to admit that he had never yet met so incomprehensible a pair.  He wanted to talk to Tussie Shuttleworth about them, but Tussie would not talk.  To Tussie it seemed impossible to talk about Priscilla because she was sacred to him, and she was sacred to him because he adored her so.  He adored her to an extent that amazes me to think of, worshipping her beauty with all the headlong self-abasement of a very young man who is also a poet.  His soul was as wax within him, softest wax punched all over with little pictures of Priscilla.  No mother is happy while her child’s soul is in this state, and though he was extremely decent, and hid it and smothered it and choked it with all the energy he possessed, Lady Shuttleworth knew very well what was going on inside him and spent her spare time trying to decide whether to laugh or to cry over her poor Tussie.  “When does Robin go back to Cambridge?” she asked Mrs. Morrison the next time she met her, which was in the front garden of a sick old woman’s cottage.

Mrs. Morrison was going in with a leaflet; Lady Shuttleworth was going in with a pound of tea.  From this place they could see Priscilla’s cottage, and Robin was nailing up its creepers in the sight of all Symford.

“Ah—­I know what you mean,” said Mrs. Morrison quickly.

“It is always such a pity to see emotions wasted,” said Lady Shuttleworth slowly, as if weighing each word.

“Wasted?  You do think she’s an adventuress, then?” said Mrs. Morrison eagerly.

“Sh-sh.  My dear, how could I think anything so unkind?  But we who are old”—­Mrs. Morrison jerked up her chin—­“and can look on calmly, do see the pity of it when beautiful emotions are lavished and wasted.  So much force, so much time frittered away in dreams.  And all so useless, so barren.  Nothing I think is so sad as waste, and nothing is so wasteful as a one-sided love.”