For the rest of the night Mrs. Blencarrow shut herself up in her own room; she would not come downstairs, not even to dinner. The boys arrived and sought their mother in the drawing-room, wondering that she did not come to meet them, but found only their uncles there, standing before the fire like two baffled conspirators. Reginald and Bertie rushed to their mother’s room, and plunged into it, notwithstanding her maid’s exhortation to be quiet. ‘Your mamma has got a bad headache, sir.’ They were not accustomed to any régime of headaches. They burst in and found her seated in her dressing-gown over the fire. ‘Is your head so bad? Are you going to stay out?’ said Reginald, who had just learnt the slang of Eton. ‘And there’s Uncle Rex and Uncle Roger downstairs,’ said Bertie. ‘You must tell them I am not well enough to come down. You must take the head of the table and take care of them instead of me,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow. ‘But what is the matter, mamma?’ said Bertie. ‘You do not look very bad, though you are red here.’ He touched his own cheeks under his eyes, which were shining with the cold and excitement of arriving. ‘Never mind, my dear. Emmy and you must do the honours of the house. I am not well enough to come downstairs. Had you good sport?’ ‘Oh, very good one day; but then, mamma, you know this horrid frost---- ’ ‘Yes, yes. I should not wonder if the ice on the pond would bear to-morrow,’ she said with a smile. ‘Now run away, dear boys, and see that your uncles have everything they want; for I can’t bear much talking, you know, with my bad head.’ ‘Poor mamma!’ they cried. Reginald felt her forehead with his cold hand, as he had seen her do, and Bertie hugged her in a somewhat rude embrace. She kissed both the glowing faces, bright with cold and fun and superabundant life. When they were gone, noisily, yet with sudden starts of recollection that they ought to be quiet, Mrs. Blencarrow got up from her chair and began to walk hurriedly about the room, now and then wringing her hands. ‘Even my little boys!’ she said to herself, with the acutest tone of anguish. ‘Even my little boys!’ For she had no headache, no weakness. Her brain was supernaturally clear, seeing everything on every side of the question. She was before a problem which it needed more than mortal power to solve. To do all her duties was impossible; which was she to fulfil and which abandon? It was not a small contradiction such as sometimes confuses a brain, but one that was fundamental, striking at the very source of life. She was not angry with her brothers, or with the others who had made this assault upon her. What were they, after all? Had they never spoken a word, the problem would still have been there, more and more difficult to solve every day.