The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's treatment she had had, all helped to brace her up on Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and difficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of her call. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not help feeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the grace of Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings about Trafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she ought to have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencing moral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appeal for the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself so recklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if she had really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would have been a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generous temper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot and Marjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be very pale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and to put a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter. She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as though she tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightly improper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extort more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice." In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," she said. "His first thought was to come after you both with a pistol. If--if _he_ hadn't married you----" "But dear Mummy, of _course_ we meant to marry! We married right away." "Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't----" She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary flush of indignation in her cheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation. "He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll come round--you were always his favourite daughter." "I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism in her voice. "I'm afraid dear, at present--he will do nothing for you." "I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie with an unreal serenity; "_ever_." "For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants to forget----. Everything." "Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, I won't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."