It was a Godsend; yet it was absurd. Like the weather machine of the old man and the old woman on opposite ends of the stick. . . . When the old man came out the old woman went in and it would rain; when the old woman came out . . . It was exactly like that! She hadn't time to work out the analogy. But it was like that. . . . In rainy weather the whole world altered. Darkened! . . . The cat-gut that turned them slackened . . . slackened. . . . But, always, they remained at opposite ends of the stick! Mark was saying, the umbrella crook hindering his utterance: "We buy then an annuity of five hundred for your mother. . . ." It was astonishing, though it spread tranquillity through her, how little this astonished her. It was the merely retarded expected. Mr. Tietjens senior, an honourable man, had promised as much years ago. Her mother, an august genius, was to wear herself out putting, Mr. Tietjens alive, his political views in his paper. He was to make it up to her. He was making it up. In no princely fashion, but adequately, as a gentleman. Mark Tietjens, bending over, held a piece of paper. A bell-boy came up to him and said: "Mr. Riccardo!" Mark Tietjens said: "No! He's gone!" He continued: "Your brother. . . . Shelved for the moment. But enough to buy a practice, a good practice! When he's a full-fledged sawbones." He stopped, he directed upon her his atrabilarian eyes, biting his umbrella handle; he was extremely nervous. "Now you!" he said. "Two or three hundred. A year of course! The capital absolutely your own. . . ." He paused: "But I warn you! Christopher won't like it. He's got his knife into me. I wouldn't grudge you . . . oh, any sum!" . . . He waved his hand to indicate an amount boundless in its figures. "I know you keep Christopher straight," he said. "The only person that could!" He added: "Poor devil!" She said: "He's got his knife into you? Why?" He answered vaguely: "Oh, there's been all this talk. . . . Untrue, of course." She said: "People have been saying things against you? To him? Perhaps because there's been delay in settling the estate." He said: "Oh, no! The other way round, in fact!" "Then they have been saying," she exclaimed, "things against . . . against me. And him!" He exclaimed in anguish: "Oh, but I ask you to believe . . . I beg you to believe that I believe . . . _you_! Miss Wannop!" He added grotesquely: "As pure as dew that lies within Aurora's sun-tipped . . ." His eyes stuck out like those of a suffocating fish. He said: "I beg you not on that account to hand the giddy mitten to . . ." He writhed in his tight double collar. "His wife!" he said . . . "She's no good to . . . _for_ him! . . . She's soppily in love with him. But no _good_ . . ." He very nearly sobbed. "You're the only . . ." he said, "I _know_ . . ."