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but I have written, and run an antique shop, and trimmed hats! It seems to me that I know the dusty arena as well as any modern woman—that I am as modern in that as any of them;—even though I was presented at Court in the dark ages!’

Clive crossed over to her. She had done what she intended; made herself real and near to him; bound him to her—but, when he came to her like that and put his arms around her, she had known that the heavy beating of his heart was for the secret he hid from her as much as for his love and retrospective pity. And she had known, with a cruel pain, that she had asked her son for gratitude. She hardly kept herself from weeping as she heard him say: ‘Oh, darling Mummy—don’t I know it! Do you think that you need ever remind me? Do you think that I shall ever forget all that you have done for me!’

So they had clung together—their embrace effacing nothing, and he had gone to Cornwall for Easter and when he came back was engaged to Hester Blakeston.