would not and could not last, and it was hardly worth while to
do more than superficially conform to the regulations of the somewhat
monotonous existence.

Most of the ten years of his life had been spent under the dominant
influence of a devoted woman. All that he had learnt from mankind had
been a cunning dishonesty that had nearly ruined his own small
existence and indirectly caused his mother's death. Women, indeed, had
always been near him, and there were times when he thought regretfully
of Mrs. Moss. There were none but menservants at Aston house, and the
only glimpse of femininity was afforded by the flying visits of
Constantia, Mr. Aston's married daughter. She would at times invade
Aymer's room, a vision of delicate colourings and marvellous gowns.
She was a tall, dark, lovely woman who carried on the traditional
family beauty with no poverty of detail. She seemed to Christopher to
be ever going on somewhere or returning from somewhere. He liked to
sit and watch her when she flashed into the quiet room, and spent
perhaps half an hour making her brother laugh with her witty accounts
of people and matters strange to Christopher. She was kind to the boy,
when she remembered him, lavish with her smiles and nonsense and
presents, but it was like entertaining a rainbow, an elusive, shadowy
thing of beauty. She could not be said to denote the Woman in the
House. Christopher, as he wandered about the big silent rooms and long
corridors, was perforce obliged to take with him for company a more
shadowy presence, an imaginary vision of another woman, also tall and
dark, but without Constantia Wyatt's irresponsible gaiety and dazzling
smile. He would escort this phantom Woman through his favourite rooms,
pointing out the treasures to her. He even apportioned her a room for
herself, behind a closed door at the end of the wing opposite to which
Aymer Aston lived. For it was here he had first discovered with what
ease the image of his dead mother fitted into the surroundings he had
never shared with her. It was rather an uncanny, eerie idea, and had
Christopher been at all morbid or of a dreamy disposition it might
have been a very injudicious fancy: but he was the personification of
good health and robust spirits. His vivid imagination flitted as
naturally and easily round the memory of his dead mother as it
rejoiced in the adventures of the Robinson family, or thrilled over
the history of John Silver. It was just a deliber