"How d'ye do," Sir Hugh replied. His voice was neither soft nor steady; the sharpness, the irritation was in it. "I didn't know you were down here," he said. Over Amabel's shoulder, while she still held Amabel's hands, Lady Elliston looked at him, all sweetness. "Yes: I arrived this morning. I am staying with the Greys." "The Greys? How in the dickens did you run across them?" Sir Hugh asked with a slight laugh. "I met them at Jack's cousin's--the nice old bishop, you know. They are tiresome people; but kind. And there is a Grey _fils_--the oldest--whom Peggy took rather a fancy to last winter,--they were hunting together in Yorkshire;--and I wanted to look at him--and at the place!--"--Lady Elliston's smile was all candour. "They are very solid; it's not a bad place. If the young people are really serious Jack and I might consider it; with three girls still to marry, one must be very wise and reasonable. But, of course, I came really to see you, Amabel." She had released Amabel's hands at last with a final soft pressure, and, as Amabel took her accustomed chair near the table, she sat down near her and loosened her cloak and unwound her scarf, and threw back her laces. "And I've been making friends with your boy," she went on, looking up at Augustine:--"he's been walking me about the garden, saying that you mustn't be disturbed. Why haven't I been able to make friends before? Why hasn't he been to see me in London?" "I'll bring him someday," said Sir Hugh. "He is only just grown up, you see." "I see: do bring him soon. He is charming," said Lady Elliston, smiling at Augustine. Amabel remembered her pretty, assured manner of saying any pleasantness--or unpleasantness for that matter--that she chose to say; but it struck her, from this remark, that the gift had grown a little mechanical. Augustine received it without embarrassment. Augustine already seemed to know that this smiling guest was in the habit of saying that young men were charming before their faces when she wanted to be pleasant to them. Amabel seemed to see her son from across the wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure, suddenly grown strange, she felt that Augustine's manners were 'nice.' The fact of their niceness, of his competence--really it matched Lady Elliston's--made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. There was no uncertainty in Augustine; his theories might be young; his character was formed; his judgments would not change. She forced herself not to think; but to look and listen.