"He is the dearest boy in the world," she said. "We have been friends always, and now he will not allow me to be anxious about him. I really think that as far as the frightfulness of things will let him be, he is actually enjoying his life! Men are such queer creatures, they like to fight!" Amaryllis asked what was her latest news of him, and where he was, and listened interestedly to Mrs. Ardayre's replies: "The cavalry have not had very much to do lately, fortunately," she remarked. "My husband has just gone back, but I suppose if there is a shortage of men for the trenches, they will be dismounted perhaps." "I expect so--then we shall have to use all our courage and control our fears." Amaryllis turned the conversation back to Denzil again, and drew his mother out. She would like to have heard incidents of his childhood and of how he looked when he was a little boy, but she was too timid to ask any deliberate questions. She felt drawn to this lady, she looked so young and human. Perhaps she was not so wonderful in evening dress, but her figure was boyish in its slim spareness--in these serge travelling clothes she hardly looked thirty-five! She wondered what Denzil had told his mother about her--probably that she was going to have a child, but nothing more. They talked in the most friendly way for half an hour, and then Amaryllis asked her guest if she would like to come and see the house and especially the picture gallery and the Elizabethan Denzil hanging there. "It is just my boy!" Mrs. Ardayre cried, when they stood in front of it. "Eyes and all, they are bold and true and so loving. Oh! my dear child, you can't think what a darling he is; from his babyhood every woman has adored him--the nurse maids were his slaves, and my old housekeeper and my maid are like two jealous cats as to who shall do things for him when he comes home. He has that queer quality which can wile a bird off a tree. I daresay I am the silliest of them all!" Amaryllis listened, enchanted. "You see he has not one touch of me in him," Mrs. Ardayre went on, "but I was so frantically in love with my husband when he was born, he naturally was all Ardayre. Does it not interest you, Amaryllis, to wonder what your little one, when it comes, will look like? It ought to be pronouncedly of the family, your being also an Ardayre." "Indeed yes, I am very curious. And how we all hope that it will be a son!" "Is there a portrait of your husband here? Denzil says they are alike." "There is one in my sitting room; it is going to be moved in here presently, when mine is done next year. It is by Sargent, almost the last portrait he painted. Let us go there now and see it." "But there is no likeness," Mrs. Ardayre exclaimed presently, when they had gone to the cedar parlour and were examining the picture of John. "Can you discover it?" "I thought they were very alike once--but I do not altogether see it now."