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young schoolgirl with a talent for obedience. At their first meeting, Arthur Penfold, perceiving the talent for obedience, wanted to marry her much more than he had ever wanted anything.
    â€œA very grave young person,” the vicar told him. “She lives with an honorary aunt, to whom she is devoted—er—excessively so!” The vicar pulled himself up. “Perhaps that was a mean remark in the special circumstances!” He told a tragic tale. In the 1914 war, when Margaret was six, her mother had been killed in an air raid on London, while the child was in Helmstane with a Mrs. Blagrove. Scarcely had Mrs. Blagrove finished breaking the news to the liftle girl when a War Office telegram announced that her father had been killed in action. Mrs. Blagrove cherished the orphan, adopted her and did her best to fill the role of both parents.
    â€œWith indifferent success, I fear,” finished the vicar. “Margaret is a dear girl—she helps me with the parish chores, which is convenient for me but not really the sort of thing she ought to be doing. She has lost her place in her own generation and shows no desire to find it. I would guess that she is, perhaps, unadventurous—a little afraid of life.”
    Too afraid of life, in fact, to run away from a husband, who would stand between her and the world, which she need apprehend only through his eyes. Penfold required no further information about the girl nor her intimate personal history, nor her tastes, nor her hopes, nor her fears. For their first date, he asked her to meet him in London for lunch and a matinée.
    For an instant, the schoolgirl personality vanished. The wide set eyes became the eyes of a vital young woman reaching out for her share of gaiety. But only for an instant.
    â€œI’ll ask Aunt Agnes.”
    Six weeks later, in a punt on the river, he told her that it was in her power to make him extremely happy. He gave instances of so many ways in which she could give him happiness that the idea of marrying him began to take the colour of a moral duty. Whether he could give her a commensurate happiness was a question which was not raised by either side.
    Margaret admitted having observed that a girl was expected to marry and leave home—even when her own people were fond of her, which she thought puzzling.
    â€œThen you will , Madge?”
    â€œI’ll ask Aunt Agnes.”
    â€œNo, darling!” said Penfold, who had not yet discovered that she was intelligent. “We’ll go back at once and I’ll tell her myself.”

Chapter Two
    Mrs. Blagrove had draped her Victorian furniture in bright chintzes, hung a nude or two on her walls and believed the result to be modern. She believed the same of herself. In the nineties she had considered herself one of the New Women—had she not smoked cigarettes and read the early works of Bernard Shaw!—though she secretly preferred the output of Miss Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whose sentimental verse was already crossing the Atlantic. She had an income sufficient for all the hobbies and good works with which she fought her dread of lonely old age.
    She began by putting Penfold at his ease, which slightly offended him and spoilt his tactical approach.
    â€œI know why you have come, Mr. Penfold.” Her smile was elaborately confidential. “I’ll say it for you, shall I? You have asked Madge, and she has referred you to me. I’ve felt this in the air for a fortnight. And there was no way of warning either of you.”
    â€œBut, Mrs. Blagrove! You cannot mean that you refuse your consent?”
    â€œI have no such authority—my guardianship expired when she was twenty-one.”
    â€œShe would never take an important step against your wishes.”
    â€œNor an unimportant step, either. My moral influence, I admit, is paramount. For that very reason, I shall not exercise it. I shall urge Madge to do whatever she wants to do.” Before