For Aliette _had_ been courageous--divinely courageous as it appeared to Julia--that afternoon at Chilworth Cove when Ronnie broke his bad news. Her own heart had failed a little; but not Aliette's. Aliette said--Julia could still remember the look in her eyes when she spoke: "You're not to worry for my sake, either of you. I shall be perfectly happy so long as you and Ronnie don't fret. If only Ronnie's career doesn't suffer----" She, Ronnie's mother, had wanted to fight; had wanted the lovers to return to Bruton Street with her, to defy Brunton openly. After that one little failure of courage, her whole temperament cried out for combat. Fighting, she felt, was now the only course. But Aliette had counseled delay. Aliette had persuaded her to leave them at Chilworth, to go back alone to Bruton Street. And at Bruton Street she had stayed all summer. It had been foolish to stay all summer at Bruton Street; she perceived that now. She ought to have taken her usual holiday. She ought to have listened to the advice of her "medicine-man," who, still maintaining the need for rest, was vague, unsatisfactory, disturbing. The parlormaid, entering to make up the fire, startled her mistress. "I wish you'd come in more quietly, Kate," said Julia irritably. "I'm sorry, madam. Shall I bring your tea?" "No, not yet." Julia resumed her reverie. Was there no way by which the man whose obstinacy stood between her son and his happiness might be brought to bay? Apparently none. Sir Peter Wilberforce could only suggest that "the lady might pledge her husband's credit to such an extent that he had to take action"--and that Aliette refused to do. Dot Fancourt, whom she had also consulted, finding him incredibly stupid, incredibly weak, was all for "letting sleeping dogs lie." _He_ seemed to have no spirit; and she would have been grateful to him for spirit. She felt old; terribly old and weak; prescient, every now and then, of death. This occasional prescience frightened her. The formal religion to which she had so long clung provided only a personal and a selfish consolation for death. She wanted an impersonal, an unselfish consolation; realizing that she would never be happy to leave this world unless she could leave Ronnie happy in it. Materially, of course, she had already provided for him: all her fortune would be his. But that did not suffice. Before death claimed her she must find some sword to sever his Gordian knot. So Julia, alone in her quiet house; Julia, the literature all gone out of her, her mind busied with the actual happenings of life; while Brunton, lost in the holiday mists of the long vacation, gave never a sign; and rumor, spider-like, wove its intangible filaments to close and closer mesh. 2