Mrs. Paragon came and kissed him, the farmer's wife softly leaving them together. Peter looked tranquilly at his mother. "I'm afraid I've frightened you," he said at last. "Only for a little while," she reassured him. "What time is it? I mean, how long have you been here?" "Only three days." "It feels like a hundred years," said Peter. "As if it had all happened to someone else. There was a girl here, mother. Where is she now?" "She has gone away." Peter sank peacefully back. After a while his mother said to him: "Have you been grieving for anyone, Peter, during these last years?" "Grieving?" Peter was making diagrams of the cracks and stains on the ceiling. "You've been talking, Peter." "What have I been talking about?" he idly inquired. "You've been talking about your troubles." "I haven't any troubles." Peter turned from the ceiling to his mother's face, feeling how pleasant it was to see her there. "You've been talking about someone who troubled you," Mrs. Paragon persisted. "But, mother," he objected, "you tell me she has gone away." "There is no one else?" "No one at all." Peter lived deliciously for a week with his mother in the shaded room. He never seemed to have felt so happy. His mind was content to be idle. When he was tired of collecting into groups the roses on the wall-paper, or watching for hours the blue square of the window across which once or twice in a day a bird would fly, he would ask his mother to read to him old tales of Ainsworth and Marryat. He affected an imperious self-indulgence. It was decided at last that Peter was strong enough for the journey home. Cordial thanks and farewells were exchanged with the farmer and his wife. Peter even left a kind message for the farmer's granddaughter, who had fled for fear of infection. He no longer thought of her as one who could trouble him. XXVI Peter soon picked up his strength at Hamingburgh. Three weeks passed and he thought of returning to London. Then came a letter from Marbury. His uncle had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and Marbury was to stand at once in a contested by-election. He lightly but cordially asked Peter to come and stay with him through the fight and meet some of the distinguished people it would draw into the constituency. Peter eagerly accepted. Next day he met Marbury at York, leaving the train to avoid a tedious slow journey of forty miles. Lord Haversham's principal seat was at Highbury Towers, a lonely house on the edge of a moor. The nearest town was ten miles away. It was a fortress of civilisation planted in a wilderness. In a bad winter, with snow lying deep, it was sometimes cut off for days from the world outside. "There's something impudent about the place," said Marbury, as the car rushed over the moors. "It flies in the face of Nature. The Towers is the most comfortable home in England, and it is in a desert."