‘That I can swear to,’ Keith struck in smiling. ‘Still—by every oath I mustn’t use, if I was a natural savage instead of a Christian woman, who adores her son, I’d _bite_ her with all my teeth.—There! Between that and Grieg, I feel a little better. But oh, you sagacious bachelor, you have your divine compensations. At times it’s a positive curse to love any human thing better than your own soul.’ ‘It is that,’ Macnair agreed with quiet emphasis, as the door opened to admit Mark himself. The air seemed still to vibrate with Helen’s impassioned outburst, and he glanced quickly from one to the other. ‘What have you two been plotting—eh?’ ‘The wholesale reconstruction of the universe!’ Keith answered lightly; but Mark went straight to his mother and laid his hand on her. ‘She’s been working herself up about nothing,’ he said. ‘I can feel her quivering all through. Keith, you oughtn’t to encourage her. She’ll be needing all her reserves of strength, if she’s to pull through this. Would the drive to Bramleigh calm you down, Motherling? Or would it churn you up again, hearing me speak?’ ‘No: I should love it,’ she answered in a low voice. The invitation and the touch of his hand had soothed her already, as nothing else could have done. It was as if, by some telepathic process, he had divined the cause of her emotional stress; and when the two girls came in he said casually, without removing his hand: ‘I’m carrying Mums off with me to Bramleigh. You’ve had your drive, Bel, and the outing will do her a power of good.’ The announcement faintly ruffled Bel’s conviction that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. But later in the evening, when her own turn came, when she wandered with Mark through the terraced gardens down to the river, he found her apparently satisfied, if not communicative, as regards her interview of the morning. Convinced of her own supreme sovereignty, instinct told her that she would gain nothing by ‘giving the woman away.’ (_To be continued._)