"I suppose it _is_ inevitable," she said, beneath her breath. "I suppose the distance is too great. 'Tis such a long, long way from here to there ... such a long, long way.... Good-night, Denis; I'm going to bed." She got up slowly, cramped and tired and pale. It was not till she was on her feet that she saw Lord Evelyn sitting in the background, and remembered his presence. She had forgotten him; she had been thinking only of Denis and Peter and herself. She didn't know if he had been listening much; he sat quietly, nursing his knee, saying nothing. But when Lucy had gone he said to Denis, "You're right, Denis; you're utterly right, not to have anything to do with those swindlers," and, as if in a sudden fresh anger against them, he began again his quick, uneven pacing down the room. "False through and through," he muttered. "False through and through." Lucy's face, as she had risen to her feet and said "Good night, Uncle Evelyn," had been so like Peter's as he had last seen it, when Peter had passed him in the doorway at Astleys, that it had taken his breath away. CHAPTER XVII QUARRELS IN THE RAIN In Brook Street the rain fell. It fell straight and disconsolate, unutterably wet, splashing drearily on the paved street between the rows of wet houses. It fell all day, from the dim dawn, through the murky noon, to the dark evening, desolately weeping over a tired city. Inside number fifty-one, Peggy mended clothes and sang a little song, with Thomas in her lap, and Peter, sitting in the window-seat, knitted Thomas a sweater of Cambridge blue. Peter was getting rather good at knitting. Hilary was there too, but not mending, or knitting, or singing; he was coughing, and complaining of the climate. "I fancy it is going to be influenza," he observed at intervals, shivering. "I feel extraordinarily weak, and ache all up my back. I fancy I have a high temperature, only Peter has broken the thermometer. You were a hundred and four, I think, Peter, the day you went to bed. I rather expect I am a hundred and five. But I suppose I shall never know, as it is impossible to afford another thermometer. I feel certain it is influenza; and in that case I must give up all hope of getting that job from Pickering, as I cannot possibly go and see him to-morrow. Not but that it would be a detestable job, anyhow; but anything to keep our heads above water.... My headache is now like a hot metal band all round my head, Peggy." "Poor old boy," said Peggy. "Take some more phenacetine. And do go to bed, Hilary. If you _have_ got flu, you'll only make yourself as bad as Peter did by staying up too long. You've neither of you any more sense than Tommy here, nor so much, by a long way, have they, little man? No, Kitty, let him be; you'd only drop him on the floor if I let you, and then he'd break, you know." Silvio was kneeling up on the window-seat by Peter's side, taking an interest in the doings of the street.