"I didn't know you felt like that, Sarah," she said. "But I tell you this. At our age children are very little use. It's Geoffrey I think of all the time, and I don't doubt but that Hugh is nearly always in your mind. "That's quite true," answered Mrs. Hugh simply. "I think it's only natural that such happy marriages as ours were, should remain green in our minds. I've never grown acclimatised to life without him. Somehow familiar things don't seem so familiar." Silence fell and Miss Dorset looked at the two quiet figures whose silence covered so adequately their pain and rebellion. "If you would care for a little rest before dinner, I think perhaps we ought to go upstairs now," she suggested. Mrs. Greene got up, waving away the proffered arm, which she would accept only in the absence of visitors. "Take Mrs. Hugh to her room," she ordered. "Sarah, we've put you in the front room because of the view; the trees are lovely just now." "I'm sure they are; it gave me quite a pang to leave Lynton even for a week," said Mrs. Hugh conversationally as she left the room in the wake of Miss Dorset. Left alone Mrs. Greene walked with difficulty over to the window. When Miss Dorset came back she found her standing there, a small crumpled figure, darkly outlined against the orange curtains, gazing at the gathering dusk with the inscrutability of her many years carved round her mouth, but with a mysteriously youthful speculation alight in her eyes. V Dinner was a meal of some ceremony. The two old ladies sat at either end of the table with Miss Dorset at Mrs. Greene's right, ready to help if her unsteady hands proved unequal to the task of cutting her meat, or raising her wine glass, which she insisted on having filled to the precisely correct level. Mrs. Greene, in spite of all her modern outlook, had retained in many ways an old-fashioned eye, and she had never been able to accustom herself to the fashion for bare tables. It struck her as slightly barbaric; not in keeping with the solemn tradition that had built itself up around the ritual of dinner, a tradition that to her mind necessitated the use of fine linen, heavy silver, and good china. Candle-light, too, was abhorrent to her. The flicker of each separate candle, and the alternate dark patches and uncertain pools of light on the table which she considered should be illuminated by a steady radiance, suggested to her something slightly decadent and certainly grotesque. So the table was lit from directly above, by a round brass fitting, each of whose five globes was covered by a rose silk shade. This, with sconces on every wall, effectively dissipated the gloominess of the severe shadowy room.