She sighed--a tribute which the doctor supposed to be extorted by convention, since no one aware of the peculiarities that had characterized the _mauvais sujet_ of the Aviolet family could reasonably wish to see his memory perpetuated in his boy. Perhaps, however, the Aviolets did not wish little Cecil to resemble his mother, either. Dr. Lucian had not seen Mrs. Jim Aviolet, but he knew that Jim’s marriage abroad had been looked upon at the time as the crowning folly of a career that had been thickly peppered with follies throughout. Nor had Jim’s death redeemed Jim’s life, although it had the effect--to the doctor’s mind wholly desirable--of causing Sir Thomas Aviolet to offer a home to his daughter-in-law and only grandchild. They had arrived from Ceylon a month earlier, and, so far as Dr. Lucian was aware, he was the first person in the neighbourhood whose curiosity was to be gratified by an introduction. He followed Lady Aviolet’s squat, heavy-footed figure up the stairs and along passages so thickly carpeted that their footfalls were inaudible. Passing through a green baize-covered door, they passed into a chillier region of stairs covered with oil-cloth and pitch-pine cupboards redolent of polish. A pink-sprigged paper covered the walls instead of oak panelling. “You’ve not seen the nurseries for many years; I think not since Ford and Jim were up here?” “Not since they both had measles. Jim was only ten years old.” The doctor remembered that earlier occasion, and his own preference for the scapegrace Jim who had flatly refused to take his medicine while his elder brother Ford, far less ill, had lain with exemplary patience working out chess-problems in bed, and obediently swallowing nauseous draughts. Lady Aviolet knocked at the door of the room that had been the night nursery, and went in. “Here is Dr. Lucian, Rose--my daughter-in-law.” Mrs. Aviolet did not look more than four or five and twenty, built on a large scale, and with something of the slouching awkwardness of an overgrown schoolgirl. Her hair, which was untidy, was a very light brown in front and yellow where it was turned up at the back, and her eyes, big and brown, had beautifully upturned black lashes. Deep dimples showed at the corners of her pretty mouth, and her teeth were white and even. Her worst point might have been her skin, but it was glaringly evident, even to the doctor’s masculine perceptions, that she made lavish and unskilful use of cosmetics. They looked, at Squires, as much out of place as did her clothes--frilled where Lady Aviolet’s were plain, papery, in spite of their blackness, where the other’s were heavy and substantial. She gave Dr. Lucian a large and very capable-looking white hand, heavily laden with rings. “How d’you do? This is my little boy--he’s got a chill.”