spectacle. Her son, standing all bespattered, unsteady, his dull eyes fierce with angry light. ‘Hallo, mother! I’m a bit late. Never mind. I’ll come as I am,’ he cried, steadying himself, beating his muddy boot with his whip. Lady Car threw an anguished look at the new butler, who stood splendid and indifferent at the door. There was not even an old servant full of resource to coax the foolish wretched boy away. She had to go in and sit down smiling at the head of her table, and entertain her guests, not knowing any minute whether the boy might not burst in and make his shame visible to all. In the midst of the sounds of the dinner-table, the talk, and the ring of the knives and forks, and the movements of the servants, other sounds seemed to reach her ear of loud voices and noise outside. She had to bear it all and make no sign, but talk that her neighbours on each side might not notice, with what was almost noisiness for Carry. Perhaps, though it seems more horrible at such a crisis to be in the midst of the compulsory make-belief of society, it is better for the sufferer. She kept up, and never winced till the dinner was over, and the endless hour in the drawing-room after, and all the guests gone, those who were from the neighbourhood to their homes, those who were in the house to their rooms. Then, and only then, did she dare to breathe, to give way to the devouring anxiety in her mind. She had bidden her husband ‘Go, go!’ to the smoking-room, or anywhere with the last guests, and she was alone. The whole house had been changed; the old furniture displaced, all its associations altered: and yet in that moment everything came back again, the catafalques of old, the vulgar splendour, the old dreary surroundings. Her boy! Her boy! She thought she saw his father come out before her, as she had feared to see him all these years, saying with his old brutal laugh, ‘_Your_ boy! none of yours. Mine! mine!’ CHAPTER IX