George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack, who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the poor woman meant well. Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his influence. One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine eternity; one has nothing to go on. We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare arms.