Her marriage had withdrawn her from the circle of the old friends and neighbours among whom she had been brought up, in a measure because none of them could "do," excepting in a very casual and cursory sense, with Godfrey Pavely. The world of his youth, the little world in and about the country town of Pewsbury, to which he had introduced her as a bride with such exultant complacency, found her not only disagreeably superior, but also dull. Besides, during the early days of her marriage she had been too bewildered by the conditions of her new life, and of her relationship with her husband, to trouble about making new friends, or even new acquaintances. And so it was that in any intimate sense Mrs. Tropenell was still Laura's only close friend, but the younger woman was rather pathetically aware of how little she really possessed of the older woman's heart, how constantly she was compared, and ever to her detriment, to her dead mother, even how unconscious a rival in the older woman's favour was Laura's own child--merry, cheerful, loving little Alice. * * * * * "Aunt Letty? I didn't see you were there." Laura Pavely had a delightful voice--low, clear, vibrating. It was a voice which sometimes seemed to promise more depth of feeling than its owner ever chose to betray. As she stooped to kiss Mrs. Tropenell, Laura let herself slide down on to the floor. She knelt there for a moment, and the light gleamed on her fair hair and upturned face. "Alice sent you her love," she said softly, "heaps of love. She's better to-night, though not quite well yet!" And then, as there came a sound of quick footsteps across the hall, she rose, and drew herself up to her full height, with the grace of movement and the absence of flurry which were both so characteristic of her. Mrs. Tropenell looked up quickly. Had Laura flushed, as she sometimes did flush, with a deep, unbecoming reddening of her pale face, when moved or startled? No, she seemed, if anything, paler, more impassive than usual, and Oliver's mother asked herself, yet again, what of late she had so often asked herself--if Laura was capable of _any_ feeling, _any_ passion, save a feeling of horror, a passion of repugnance, for aught which seemed to smirch her own fastidious physical and spiritual entity. That she loved her child, the high-spirited, happy-natured little girl, whose presence alone made life sweet and normal at Lawford Chase, Mrs. Tropenell could not doubt--she had had proof of how deeply Laura loved her child on the only occasion danger had come near to Alice--during a bout of some childish ailment, when for a few hours the little creature had been in danger of death. She, the older woman, had been frightened, awed, by Laura's terrible, dry-eyed agony....