If you disagree--if you won’t, dear, make me a solemn promise--leave me three days in which to make a choice out of the five patients who wish to have me in London, and then come and see me, bringing Kitty.” “Not a word, you understand--not one single word!” “On that dreadful day when Robert told us that father had died intestate and that other--I was going to add ‘horror,’ but, since it was mother’s doing, she did it, and so it must have been right--when he told us that we were penniless and illegitimate, I saw in a flash my duty to mother’s memory. I have stuck to it, and I will stick to it. Robert must give in, or I will never play the part of wife to him.” She folded her letter into the stamped envelope, and, having dropped it deliberately into the ship’s letter-box, she rejoined Mrs. Van Husum, who was reading “The Mill on the Floss,” on the main deck. PART III I IN the shadow of a huge mulberry-tree, upon whose finger-like branches already the very light green leaves were beginning to form a veil, Katya Lascarides was sitting in a deck-chair. The expression upon her face was one of serenity and of resigned contentment. She was looking at the farmhouse; she was knitting a silk necktie, a strip of vivid green that fell across her light grey skirt. With a little quizzical and jolly expression, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of cream-coloured overalls, Kitty Langham looked sideways for approval at her aunt. She had just succeeded in driving a black cat out of the garden. They lived down there in a deep silence, Katya never speaking and eliciting no word from the child. But already the child had made concessions to the extent of clearing her throat or emitting a little “Hem!” when she desired to attract her aunt’s attention; but her constant occupation was found in the obstinate gambols of a pet lamb--a “sock,” as the farm-people called it--which inhabited the farm-house, bleated before the door, or was accustomed by butting to send the garden-gate flying back upon its hinges. This creature, about one-third the size of a mature ram, was filled with obstinacies apparently incomprehensible; it was endowed with great strength and a considerable weight. With one push of its head it would send the child rolling several feet along the grass; it would upset chairs in the dining-room; it bleated clamorously for milk at all meals when Kitty had her milk and water.