"But, if one may be allowed to entertain some doubt as to the quality of the feeling with which Mr. Melray regards the youthful widow, there can be no room for doubt as far as his mother is concerned. That Mrs. Melray the younger is distinctly antipathetic to Mrs. Melray the elder unfortunately admits of no dispute. Not that they see much of each other, save at luncheon and dinner, and perhaps for an hour afterwards in the drawing-room. The dowager always breakfasts in her own apartments and spends the major part of her time there with her companion, a middle-aged spinster, Miss Armishaw by name, and an amiable nonentity. More than once young Mrs. Melray has spoken to me, in her prettily pathetic, girlish way, of the evident dislike in which the elder woman holds her: 'I have done all I can in the effort to conciliate her, but in vain,' she says; 'so now I have given up the attempt as useless. I have been told that there are some women so constituted that they always dislike their daughters-in-law unless they themselves have had a hand in choosing them; and yet that seems a hard thing to believe.' "From this you will gather that the widow and I are on very good terms with each other; and such, indeed, is the case. On first coming here I arranged with the elder Mrs. Melray that the hour from twelve till one each day, weather permitting, should be devoted to taking Freddy out for a run in the fresh air. There is a big old-fashioned garden at the back of Loudwater House to which we sometimes limit our constitutional; but more frequently we make our way into the meadows which skirt one shore of the river and extend for miles, where the air is the purest imaginable. Well, on the third morning, as I was getting ready to go out, young Mrs. Melray came to me. 'I should so much like to go out now and then with you and Freddy, Miss Sudlow, if you will kindly allow me to accompany you,' she said. 'Since my husband's death my life has necessarily been a very quiet one. I have hardly anyone to talk to and I go nowhere. It would be a charity to let me join you.'