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Nurse, alarmed, had come running with her flowers, and saying no further word, Hester took her child by the hand and walked away.

A silence followed this departure. Monica slowly turned and walked down the garden beside her herbaceous border and, after a hesitation, Ingpen followed her. She had come to a standstill at the foot of the lawn when he joined her and was looking out at the fields and hedgerow-elms.

‘Shall I go?’ he said. ‘Or may I say I am sorry for grandmothers?’

Half an hour ago it would have been impossible for Monica to imagine herself allowing Captain Ingpen to say he was sorry. But now their eyes had met in that look of peace. ‘My little grandson is nervous;—do you wonder at it?’ she said. ‘Though I own that I never saw Hester lose her temper with him before.’ She tried to speak quietly, but her voice shook with shame and fury.

‘She was angry because you had kept him without asking leave,’ said Ingpen. ‘Isn’t it alwaysso—between a woman and her mother-in-law? I don’t know anything about these domesticities, but such antagonism seems to me to be inherent in the relationship.’

‘And what ought mothers-in-law to do?’ Monica