These musical days were the bright spots in Mrs. Wornock's existence, the chief bond of union between mother and son; as if music were the only spell which could hold this volatile spirit within the circle of domestic love. "I like my mother to accompany me," said Geoffrey. "I have played with some prodigious swells, but not one of them has had her sympathetic touch, her instantaneous comprehension of my spontaneities. They expected me to be faultily faultless, instead of which I play de Beriot as Chopin used to play Chopin, indulging every caprice as to time." Geoffrey was occasionally present when one of the organ lessons was in progress. He was interested, but not so much so as to sit still and listen. He carried Allan off to the billiard-room, or the stable, before the lesson was half over. "What a happy little family we are," he said laughingly one day, as he and Allan were strolling stablewards. "My mother is almost as fond of your _fiancée_ as if she were her daughter." "Your mother is a very amiable woman, as well as a gifted woman." "Gifted? yes, that's the word. She is all enthusiasm. There have been no spiritualists or supernatural people here lately, I suppose?" "No." "I'm glad of that. My poor mother loses her head when that kind of people are in the way. She is ready to believe in their nonsense. She wants to believe. She wants to see visions and dream dreams. She has secluded herself from the world of the living, and she would give half her fortune if she could bring the dead into her drawing-room. Poor dear mother! How many weary hours she has spent waiting for materializations that have never materialized! I have never been able to convince her that all her spiritualistic friends are pretenders and comedians. She tells me she knows that some are charlatans; but she believes that their theories are based upon eternal truths. She rebukes my scepticism with an appeal to the Witch of Endor. I dare not shock her by confessing that I have my doubts even about the Witch of Endor." He had a way of making light of his mother's fancies and eccentricities which had in its gaiety no touch of disrespect. Gaiety was the chief characteristic of his temperament, as it was with Suzette. He brought a new element of mirthfulness into the life at Discombe Manor; but with this happy temperament there was the drawback of an eager desire for change and movement which disturbed the atmosphere of a house whose chief charm to Allan's mind had been its sober quiet, its atmosphere of old-world peace. Allan studied this young man's character closely, studied him and thought of him much more than he wanted to think of him, and vainly struggled against an uneasy feeling that in every superiority of this new acquaintance there lurked a danger to his own happiness.