But this practise of masterly inactivity routed criticism.

How far was it studied, cynical on the part of the father, or innocent upon that of the daughter, she could not tell one bit; but that practically it carried success along with it, she saw to be indubitable.

"Face the music and the band stops playing"-- so she put it to herself, as she walked down the drive to the front gate, her James--was he just a trifle crestfallen, good man ?--strolling, umbrella in hand, beside her.
All subsequent outbreaks of gossip may be described as merely sporadic.
They did not spread.

As when, for instance, peppery little Dr.
Cripps--still smarting under Dr.McCabe's introduction into preserves he had reckoned exclusively his own--advised himself to throw off a nasty word or so on the subject to Commander Battye and Captain Taylor, over strong waters and cigars in his surgery--tea, the ladies, and the card-table left to their own devices in the drawing-room meanwhile--one evening after a rubber of whist.
"Damn bad taste, I call it, in a newcomer like Cripps," the sailor had remarked later to the soldier.

"But if a man isn't a gentleman what can you expect ?"--And with that, as among local persons of quality, the matter finally dropped.
Mrs.Doubleday and Butcher Cleave, to give an example from a lower social level, agreed, across the former's counter in the village shop, that-- "It is the duty of every true Christian to let bygones be bygones--and a downright flying in the face of Providence, as you may say, to do otherwise, when good customers, whose money you're sure of, are so scarce.