Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were all for Alie. 7 And next day Ronald Cavendish went back to Chilworth Cove. All the long train journey he was aware, growingly aware, of Aliette. Brunton and the herd, Wilberforce and Mollie receded into the background of his thoughts. He said to himself: "Let Brunton do his worst. Aliette and I have our love, each other." Love, all said and done, was the only issue. As for Brunton, they would face him together, face him with courage high and hearts unflinching. Courage! Courage and love! Weaponed with those two defenses, he and his mate, his mother at their side, could battle down the onslaught of any disaster. CHAPTER XVI 1 On a gray afternoon of October, Julia Cavendish sat alone in her drawing-room at Bruton Street. She was often alone now. That curious "London" which an eclectic woman of means can gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty had begun to desert. Brunton had done nothing; but already scandal, "the scandal of Julia Cavendish's son and Hector Brunton's wife," was spreading: and although people were "very sorry for Mrs. Cavendish," still, "one had to be careful where one went," "one couldn't exactly countenance that sort of thing." So the clergymen and the politicians, the schoolmasters with their wives and the young soldiers with their fiancées came but sparingly, the embassy folk not at all. Only the "Ritz crowd," who thought the whole affair rather amusing; real Society, which could afford to ignore what it did not actually know; and, of course, the literary folk still visited. Julia Cavendish treated the disaffections of her circle--scanty as yet, for the holidays scattered the scandalmongers--with contempt. In the months since her visit to Chilworth, much of her outlook on life had altered. The Victorian and the traditionalist in her were dead, the formally religious woman convert to a kindlier creed. Even literature slumbered. Literature, the sort of literature she had hitherto written, the stereotyped social romances of her earlier books, seemed so puny in comparison with the great tragedy of her son! Seated there in the old familiar drawing-room, her embroidery-frame at her elbow, a clean fire at her feet, the light from the standard-lamp glowing on her worn features, Julia tried, as she was always trying now, to find some happy ending to the tragedy--peace for her son, reward for Aliette's courage.