The room was rather barely furnished, but what there was in it was good, and there were a great many flowers. To buy old things for this and other rooms of the house was to be one of the first results of the expected increase of income, but it was doubtful whether the charm of this room would be much enhanced. For it was quiet, as Mrs. Brent said, and quietness is a valuable quality in a room. Mrs. Grant looked round her with satisfaction. "It _is_ nice," she said. "We are very happy here. I don’t think I’d change Royd for any place in the world." "I would," said Mrs. Brent. "I’m fed up with it." Mrs. Grant threw a glance at her. She was looking down, and the sullenness had returned to her face. "Fed up to the teeth," she said. She looked up in her turn. Behind the discontent was an appeal. Mrs. Grant felt suddenly very sorry for her. If she was a little common, she was also rather pathetic—a middle-aged child, out of place and out of tune. "I think it would do you good to have a change sometimes," Mrs. Grant said. "However beautiful a place is, one wants a change occasionally." "_She_ doesn’t," said Mrs. Brent vindictively. "So she thinks nobody else ought to either." It was coming at last, then. Mrs. Grant had formed her own opinion of Lady Brent long since, and it did not entirely coincide with the opinion that her husband had formed, though she had not told him so. Lady Brent had been all that could have been expected towards themselves—kind and hospitable, and within limits friendly. She had offered no real intimacy, and after a year’s intercourse it was plain that she had none to offer; but it was also plain that the intercourse need never be otherwise than smooth and even pleasant, if the limitations were observed. Mrs. Brent, on the other hand, had shown that she wanted intimacy. Mrs. Grant could not give any deep measure of friendship to one in whom there seemed to be no depths, but she could talk to Mrs. Brent about many things, about Harry and about her own children in particular, and find a response that made for friendship. She could talk, too, about the events of her own life, but was chary of doing so, because it would seem to be asking for confidences in return, and she was not sure that she wanted them. There was always in the background the feeling that Mrs. Brent and her mother-in-law were antagonistic, in spite of the apparent harmony between them; and of late that feeling had increased. Mrs. Brent was such that the gates of her lips once unlocked she would express her antagonism, and it would no longer be possible to treat it as if it did not exist. That time seemed to have come now. "I hate that woman," said Mrs. Brent, "and I won’t put up with it any longer."