ally it matched Lady
Elliston's--made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly
appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged
her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. There was no uncertainty in
Augustine; his theories might be young; his character was formed; his
judgments would not change. She forced herself not to think; but to look
and listen.

Lady Elliston continued to talk: indeed it was she and Augustine who did
most of the talking. Sir Hugh only interjected a remark now and then
from his place before the fire. Amabel was able to feel a further change
in him; he was displeased today, and displeased in particular, now, with
Lady Elliston. She thought that she could understand the vexation for
him of this irruption of his real life into the sad little corner of
kindness and duty that Charlock House and its occupants must represent
to him. He had seldom spoken to her about Lady Elliston; he had seldom
spoken to her about any of the life that she had abandoned in abandoning
him: but she knew that Lord and Lady Elliston were near friends still,
and with this knowledge she could imagine how on edge her husband must
be when to the near friend of the real life he could allow an even
sharper note to alter all his voice. Amabel heard it sadly, with a sense
of confused values: nothing today was as she had expected it to be: and
if she heard she was sure that Lady Elliston must hear it too, and
perhaps the symptom of Lady Elliston's displeasure was that she talked
rather pointedly to Augustine and talked hardly at all to Sir Hugh: her
eyes, in speaking, passed sometimes over his figure, rested sometimes,
with a bland courtesy, on his face when he spoke; but Augustine was
their object: on him they dwelt and smiled.

The years had wrought few changes in Lady Elliston. Silken, soft,
smiling, these were, still, as in the past, the words that described
her. She had triumphantly kept her lovely figure: the bright brown hair,
too, had been kept, but at some little sacrifice of sincerity: Lady
Elliston must be nearly fifty and her shining locks showed no sign of
fading. Perhaps, in the perfection of her appearance and manner, there
was a hint of some sacrifice everywhere. How much she has kept, was the
first thought; but the second came:--How much she has given up. Yes;
there was the only real change: Amabel, gazing at her, somewhat as a nun
gazes from behind convent gratings at some bright denizen