That was one reason that found Percival's twenty-first birthday gone, and still the blow not struck. The other was in tribute to the fate that had carried forward Aunt Maggie's plan through many hilly places and that, fatalistic, she dared not hasten when the promised land drew into sight. When she heard during the three months of Percival's zestful life on the little horse farm leading to his birthday that Rollo, before that birthday dawned, would be shipped and away on his leisurely journey round the world, she was at first strongly tempted to make end of her long waiting; at last to Audrey's murderer send Audrey's son. Her superstitious reliance on fate prevented her. With fate she had worked hand in hand through these long years. Vengeance had been nothing had she taken it at the outset when Audrey lay cold and still in the room in the Holloway Road. Under fate's guidance it was become a vengeance now indeed--Lady Burdon twenty years secured in her comfortable possessions; her husband by fate removed, and the blow to be struck through her cherished son; a friendship by fate designed suddenly to turn against her and drive her forth as she had driven Audrey. Fate in it all, in each moment and each measure of it, and Aunt Maggie had the fear that now to dismiss fate and anticipate the hour that she and fate had chosen would be to risk by fate's aid being dismissed. Fate gave her hint of it--gave her warning. She was in one moment being told by Percival of Rollo's intended departure and long absence; and seeing herself robbed, her plan for his twenty-first birthday defeated, was urging herself with "Now--now. No need to wait longer--now;" she was in the next hearing Percival's desolation at the thought of losing "old Rollo" for so long--of their plans for closest companionship during the few weeks that remained to them; and hearing it, was warned by the same question she once before had asked herself and dared not finish, much less answer then, and dared not finish now: "What, when I tell him, if--" Fate in it. Fate warning her, Aunt Maggie thought. Fate threatening her. Fate had been so real, so living a thing to her, its hand so plain a hundred times, that she had come to envisage it as a personality, an actuality--a grim and stern and all-powerful companion who companioned her on her way and who now stooped to her ear and told her: "Go your own way--if you dare. Seek to take your revenge now without my aid and short of the time that you and I have planned--if you dare. Abandon me and tell him now." Then the threat: "What, when you tell him, if--" "Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? Thus, at least, she held her hand, paying tribute to fate; thus when the birthday came, and Rollo and Lady Burdon across the sea, and empty her vengeance made to seem if she then took it, she turned to fate and asked of fate "What now?"