go just as far as she chose.

"Well ... after all I'm Bobby's mother.... Why should she slander her
only grandson's mother? What possible good could it do her?"

"I don't know," Susan said uncertainly. "But somehow I feel afraid of
her ... for you...."

"Oh, I've taken care of myself with her ladyship before now!" retorted
Sophy lightly.

Susan still brooded.

"I'd be awfully careful, Sophy, child, if I were you."

"How 'careful'--old Mother Misery?" smiled Sophy, slipping an arm about
her shoulders.

Susan looked straight at her as she had looked at Lady Wychcote that
morning.

"I'd be careful about ... Amaldi," said she bluntly.

Sophy's arm dropped. Rather coldly she said:

"In what way?"

"I think ... perhaps ... yes-- I think you'd better not let him come
here so often, honey."

Her tone pleaded for indulgence, but was also firm with conviction.
Sophy was still rather cold in manner.

"You mean you think I'd better sacrifice a beautiful, harmless
friendship to the whim of a sour old woman?" asked she.

Sue didn't retreat.

"I think you'd better not give that 'sour old woman' the least
scrimption of cause to gossip about you," she replied.

"You'd have me mould my life on Lady Wychcote's ideas?"

Susan put her hand very lovingly on the dark head.

"Now, lamb ... don't be huffy with your old Sue," she said. "I only want
you to be very, very careful how you cross that old tyrant's
prejudices.... I've one of the strongest feelings I ever had in my life
that you'd regret it."

Sophy looked at her with grey eyes dark and defiant.

"Sue...." she said, "I'll never, never, never give up one atom of my
friendship with Marco Amaldi for anybody or anything."

What more could Susan say--at least just then. She went to bed a very
disturbed, unhappy woman.

Towards the end of the week Sophy sent Bobby over to the Hiltons' for a
day, as she had promised. He returned that evening in quite an agitated
state of mind. He rather enjoyed being with his grandmother
occasionally. As he told Sophy: "I don't like Granny much--but I almost
love her sometimes--when she's telling me 'bout father, and what a great
man he would have been if he'd lived--and what jolly things all my
grandfathers did for England. I think Granny's something like machinery.
You're awful interested in it ... but you don't want to get too near to
it."

This evening the cause of his excitement was shown plainly by his
remarks to his moth