In the morning Lady Burdon came with Rollo to make her request that Percival might spend much of his time at the Old Manor as Rollo's playmate. In these seven years since the amazement at Miller's Field, this was but her third visit to the estate, her first for the purpose of staying any length of time, and the first that had seen Rollo with her. Two days had been spent here when Jane Lady Burdon had been brought to rest in Burdon churchyard; three when Mr. Maxwell, the agent, had been troublesome and importunate in the matter of expensive alterations on the property. Lady Burdon had come down then "to have an understanding with him;" as she expressed it--"to see for herself." The result had been as unfortunate for Mr. Maxwell (to whom she had shown some temper) as it had been augmentative of the dislike she had always felt for the property and its greedy responsibilities. The result had been to filter over the countryside from Mr. Maxwell that she was the controlling partner in the new representatives of the house; that hers was the refusal to take up the urgently needed irrigation scheme; hers the scandal (as it became) of neglect to carry out improvements in the cottages over at Abbess Roding; hers the crime (as it was held) of the selling-up over at Shepwall that entailed eviction of tenants old on the land as the house of Burdon itself. On the other hand the result had been to return Lady Burdon to the Mount Street life with at least a temporary stop put to the Maxwell whinings and at least a lighter drain from the Mount Street expenses. Miss Oxford had not seen her on either of these visits. Miss Oxford had only smiled in an odd way when she heard of the behaviour that had set the countryside clacking. The better Lady Burdon flourished, the more Lady Burdon exercised the prerogatives of her usurped position, the riper she ripened for the blow, when there should be returned to her the son whose mother she had murdered; that was the entertainment Miss Oxford nursed through these years, living so gently and so quietly, "thinking" so much, poor dear.