“You must excuse me,” she said, “my dear boy, if I don’t enter into it to-night. I’m--a little tired and put out. I must go and look after those girls; and though it’s your first night at home, it’s late, and I don’t think I shall come down again. After your journey, Fred, you should go early to bed.” “After my journey!” he cried with angry dismay. “What has my journey to do with it? But never mind, mother, if you’re tired. I’ll come to your room, and have a talk over the fire.” “Not to-night,” she said, and kissed him. She lingered a moment, patting him on the shoulder with her hand. “I know it must seem strange to you, Fred--but not to-night, not to-night.” As a matter of fact, the least imaginative of lookers-on will allow that the position of a middle-aged mother who has to tell her grown-up son that she is going to marry again must be an embarrassing one. Mrs. Dalyell was not like a girl expecting ecstatic happiness in the union with the man she loves. It was an arrangement which had come to seem natural, partly because she wanted someone to lean upon, and ill-natured gossips (as she heard) objected to that constant, easy, unembarrassing presence of the household friend, which she and her children had found so comfortable--without the existence of some closer bond. She would rather honestly have had Mr. Wedderburn on his old footing; but, if she could not have him on his old footing, it was better to marry him than to lose him. This had been the unimpassioned fashion of Mrs. Dalyell’s thoughts. And he wished it. A man, it appeared, even at fifty-seven, could not content himself with the friendship which was quite enough for a woman. Perhaps she was a little flattered to know that this was so, and that in her mature matronhood she still had charms. And she had thought, as he assured her, that it would draw the family bonds closer and make so little difference. The chief difference would be that he would come of right, instead of only for love, and that the interests of her family would be his own, not only much more than his own, as they were at present. It had seemed very plausible, as he set all the advantages forth, which indeed Pat Wedderburn had done, not only to calm her scruples, but also his own; for, had she but known it, he too was very well contented with the existing position of affairs. But if Mrs. Dalyell had known the trouble it would have given her--the wild vexation of the girls, and the horrible necessity of having to tell Fred! No, that last was what she could not do. She had intended to do it on his return, but her courage had failed her. Tell your grown-up son that you are going to marry! No, no, she could not do it. And when two years had not yet elapsed from his father’s death! “Oh,” she said to herself, “it was no wrong to Robert! Oh, no, no wrong to Robert! It was a different thing, not to be thought of in the same way.” But still, when it came to the point, she could not do it, it was beyond her power.