Maggie scarcely heard; but there was one sentence of Mrs. Erps that joined her thoughts: "You've got the living for to think of." Yes, she had that--and the dead to revenge. "They have killed her," she had cried to the doctor. Through the long night, when she knelt beside the still figure, that thought had burned within her and refused her tears. It grew to an intolerable agony that pressed upon her brain as though a band of steel were there. She understood what had bewildered Audrey--who it had been that had said "I am Lady Burdon." Her imagination pictured the woman. An orgasm of most terrible hate possessed her, increasing that dreadful pressure on her brain, and suddenly something seemed to her to have given way beneath the pressure. Hate or passion of that degree never filled her again. She was strangely quiet in manner when Mrs. Erps came to her in the morning, strangely quiet at the funeral in Highgate Cemetery while Mrs. Erps wept in loud emotion, and always quite quiet in mind. The child was going to live, she was somehow fully assured of that, and she was not going to give him up--her Audrey's child--as, if she spoke, she might have to give him up. He was going to live with her at "Post Offic" and take his mother's place; and one day.... They had taken Audrey from her. One day she would return to them Audrey's son. "I am Lady Burdon" had murdered Audrey. One day, when "I am Lady Burdon" was secure and comfortable in her possessions, and had forgotten Audrey, Audrey's son should avenge his mother.... Nothing could go wrong, Miss Oxford thought. She went through all the proofs in the carved box. Nothing was wanting. One day she would hand them to him--and then! She wrote to her friend, Miss Purdie, at Little Letham, who had been taking care of "Post Offic" for her and told her--for the village information--that Audrey had lost her husband, and, on the shock, had died, in giving birth to a son. "I have called him Percival--his father's name--Percival Redpath." "Look arter yerself," cried Mrs. Erps, as the train drew out of Waterloo. "Look arter yerself. Can't not look arter him if yer don't--and 'e 'll want lookin' arter, 'e will. 'E's going ter be a knockaht, that's what 'e's going to be, ain't yer, yer saucy sossidge! Sossidge! Goo'by, sossidge. Goo'by...." BOOK THREE BOOK OF THE HAPPY, HAPPY TIME. THE ELEMENT OF YOUTH CHAPTER I PERCIVAL HAS A PEEP AT THE 'NORMOUS I Young Percival was seven--rising eight--when he first saw Burdon Old Manor. Miss Oxford had taken him for a walk, and they were in the direction of the Manor grounds, a locality she commonly avoided, when "There's a cart coming!" he warned her. He had lagged behind, exploring in a dry ditch; and he raced up to her with the news, catching her hand and drawing her to the hedge, for she had been walking in the middle of the road, occupied with her thoughts.