ears crept by, would she try to wean Bobby from
her, influence him against her? Did she lust for him to make of him what
she had failed to make of Cecil and Gerald? She felt as if she must
snatch Bobby from that well-preserved breast, and run to hide with him
in the nethermost parts of the earth. It was a feeling stronger than
reason, one of those presentiments which seized her sometimes--which so
often came true. A powerful, eerie feeling of _knowing_ without being
able to say why--like the knowledge that had come to her when she told
Olive Arundel that she would meet Amaldi in a room with three windows.
Then she shook the feeling off. The very instance that she had recalled
calmed her. There had been three windows, true. But evidently Amaldi
was to play no important part in her life. She might not see him for
years, if ever. Olive had told her that he was returning to Italy in
July.

Miller came to give Bobby his luncheon and the two ladies left the
nursery together. As they passed through the baize door that shut the
corridor leading to the nursery from the rest of the house, Lady
Wychcote said, "Come to my room a moment, please. I've something to show
you that may interest you."

She unlocked a little ivory box on her dressing-table and took out a
miniature, framed as a locket. "My father, when he was a child," she
said briefly. "Do you see the likeness?"

Sophy gazed down at the miniature, and the dark fear stole over her
again. It was certainly strangely like her Bobby. The same dark-red
curls, and imperious little cleft chin. The eyes in the miniature were
brown, Bobby's were grey--that was the most noticeable difference.

"Yes--it's very like Bobby," she said with an effort.

"My father was Chancellor of the Exchequer at seven-and-thirty," said
Lady Wychcote. "You see now the chief reason of my interest in my
grandson."

Sophy saw indeed. Then she gathered up her courage.

"But it's a pity, I think, to count on the tendencies of such a mite,"
she said. "He may not show the least inclination for politics."

"That," said Lady Wychcote rather grimly, "is a matter of education."

Sophy looked into the hard eyes.

"I think not," she said, but her tone was gentle.

"Allow me--as one having more experience--to disagree with you," replied
her mother-in-law.

Sophy still looked at her.

"You forget one thing," she said finally, "the fact that he probably
inherits something of my nature. I have to a hopele