"I know it's boring," his mother went on, "very boring to have a mother who tries to interfere with a young man's natural amusements. I don't a bit want to be a spoil-sport, but you know how horrified father would be if he thought you were gambling. Luckily I was able to help you out with that money. But I shan't always be able to help you, and I do so want you to help yourself." Mary had tried not to bring Richard into the conversation in order to make a comparison. But before she could stop herself the comparison was made. "Richard!" Geoffrey echoed, flushing. "I've never pretended to compete with him. And anyway you wouldn't expect a soldier on active service to have the temptations I have at the 'Varsity." "What a mean remark! Unworthy of a brother!" Geoffrey shifted back from his left leg to his right. "Whatever I do and whatever I say is sure to be wrong," he muttered. Mary turned away with a sigh. It was not thus she had pictured her second son at eighteen when ten years ago she had sat in the shade of the mulberry tree at High Corner, during that first delicious summer of their possession, and watched him turning somersaults on the bright lawn. Then her only fear for Geoffrey was that the blood might rush to his head from the energy of his exercise. How foolish an apprehension that seemed compared with the present dread for Geoffrey's future! Later in that month Queen Victoria died, and on the gray February morning when the funeral procession crossed London Mary found herself kept by the press of people from reaching Grosvenor Place, where Jemmie had been lent a window to watch with his family the passing of a great period, the end of a mighty reign, the obsequies of an august and noble woman. She turned aside into Hyde Park, vexed with herself for making a muddle of the occasion; but when she was out of the crowd and walking in comfort under the bare trees she was glad that she had not succeeded in reaching Grosvenor Place, for out of the gray air beyond the fume of gray boughs sounded the lament of Chopin's Funeral March, not as if it was being played by mortal instruments, but like a coronach wailed by remote winds, a threnody uttered by unimaginable waves.