Throughout the three months of Edwin's training in England, even during the trying days of his last leave, she maintained this admirable self-command. It lasted indeed until the Spring of 1915 when she received news of Edwin's death. At that her resolution broke. It seemed to her that Providence had played her an unwarrantable trick. She had vowed to be a different woman; she had been a different woman, and this was her reward: that her husband had been taken from her. She sat looking dumbly at the telegram, while floods of self-pity rolled over her. Suddenly she realised that nobody knew yet, that Mr. and Mrs. Greene and Rodney ought to be told at once. At the thought of Rodney working hard but in safety at his engineering works, she was suddenly seized by a fervour of hysterical resentment. Unclenching her damp hands she went to the telephone and rang up his house. "I want to speak to Mrs. Rodney, please," she said, "Mrs. Hugh speaking." In a moment she heard Edith's voice. "Hullo, Dora, did you want me?" "Edwin's dead," she stated baldly into the telephone. "What did you say?" asked Mrs. Rodney, for once at a loss. "Edwin's been killed," said Dora, her voice rising dangerously. "My dear Dora," she heard, "This is terrible. I'll come round at once. I'm dreadfully sorry." "Oh, are you?" shouted Dora, "It's an easy thing to be. You've got your husband at home safely tied to your apron strings. You can afford to be sorry for me, can't you?" "Hush, Dora," Mrs. Rodney's voice sounded authoritatively down the wire. "You must control yourself. I'll come round to you at once." But it was too late to stop the outburst. "Come if you like; I won't see you," Dora was screaming now. "You've always done your best to spite me, and you needn't pretend now that you've ever cared for Edwin or me. You've always had more luck and more money and now I've lost Edwin too, and I know perfectly well you think I deserve it, but at least my husband doesn't hide like a coward in his engineering works." Her voice died away, as it dawned on her that Edith had rung off. She was speaking to nobody. As she hung up the receiver she caught sight of the parlourmaid's scared and anxious face looking over the banisters. "When Mrs. Rodney calls, tell her I can't see her," she said harshly. "Mr. Greene's dead; he's been killed." She pushed past the maid on the stairs, and burst into her own room, wringing her hands and crying loudly. IV After his father's death young Edwin Greene found school holidays very trying. He continued to miss his father both as an actual presence and as the restful element in the house, and he found himself embroiled in a series of exhausting scenes with his mother. These scenes ended in still more exhausting reconciliations, during which she would hold him, clasped in her arms while she repeated that she was now a widow and he her only hope, in accents varying from the genuinely tearful to the luxuriously sentimental.