His strong arm tightened about her a little, and, still looking straight before her, but leaning perhaps a little closer into the shelter of his arm, she said tremulously, inconsequently it might have seemed: "Oliver? Are you going to accept Lord St. Amant's invitation?" With a sharp shoot of hidden pain she felt his movement of recoil, but all he said was, very quietly, "I've not quite made up my mind, mother." "It would give me pleasure if you were to do so. He has been a very good and loyal friend to me for a long, long time, my dear." "I know that." She waited a moment, then forced herself to go on: "You were never quite fair to St. Amant, Oliver." "I--I feared him, mother." And then, as she uttered an inarticulate murmur of pain and of protest, he went on quickly, "The fear didn't last very long--perhaps for two or three years. You see I was so horribly afraid that you were going to marry him." In the darkness he was saying something he had never meant, never thought to say. And she answered, "It was a baseless fear." "Was it? I wonder if it was! Oh, of course I know you are telling me the truth as you see it now--but, but surely, mother?" "Surely no, Oliver. It is true that St. Amant wished, after his wife's death, that I should marry him, but he soon saw that I did not wish it, that nothing was further from my wish--then." "_Then?_" he cried. "What do you mean, mother? Lady St. Amant only died when I was fifteen!" "I would like to tell you what I mean. And after I have told you, I wish never to speak of this subject to you again. But I owe it to myself as well as to you, to tell you the truth, Oliver. Where is your hand?" she said, "let me hold it while I tell you." And then slowly and with difficulty she began speaking, with a hesitation, a choosing of her words, which were in sharp contrast to her usual swift decision. "I want to begin by telling you," her voice was very low, "that according to his lights--the lights of a man of the world and of, well yes, of an English gentleman--St. Amant behaved very well as far as I was concerned. I want you to understand that, Oliver, to understand it thoroughly, because it's the whole point of my story. If St. Amant had behaved less well, I should have nothing to tell--you." She divined the quiver of half-shamed relief which went through her son. It made what she wished to say at once easier and more difficult. "As I think you know, I first met St. Amant when I was very young, in fact before I was 'out,' and he was the first really clever, really attractive, and, in a sense, really noted man I had ever met. And then"--she hesitated painfully. "And then, mother?" Oliver's voice was hard and matter-of-fact. He was not making it easy for her.