n were afraid of him. And he was perhaps a little afraid of woman.
She was in theory too lovely and desirable--the half-moon in a summer
sky; in practice too cloying, or too harsh. He had an affection for
Barbara, his younger sister; but to his mother, his grandmother, or his
elder sister Agatha, he had never felt close. It was indeed amusing to
see Lady Valleys with her first-born. Her fine figure, the blown roses
of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a slight tendency to roll, as
though amusement just touched with naughtiness bubbled behind them; were
reduced to a queer, satirical decorum in Miltoun's presence. Thoughts
and sayings verging on the risky were characteristic of her robust
physique, of her soul which could afford to express almost all that
occurred to it. Miltoun had never, not even as a child, given her his
confidence. She bore him no resentment, being of that large, generous
build in body and mind, rarely--never in her class--associated with the
capacity for feeling aggrieved or lowered in any estimation, even its
own. He was, and always had been, an odd boy, and there was an end of
it! Nothing had perhaps so disconcerted Lady Valleys as his want of
behaviour in regard to women. She felt it abnormal, just as she
recognized the essential if duly veiled normality of her husband and
younger son. It was this feeling which made her realize almost more
vividly than she had time for, in the whirl of politics and fashion, the
danger of his friendship with this lady to whom she alluded so discreetly
as 'Anonyma.'

Pure chance had been responsible for the inception of that friendship.
Going one December afternoon to the farmhouse of a tenant, just killed by
a fall from his horse, Miltoun had found the widow in a state of
bewildered grief, thinly cloaked in the manner of one who had almost lost
the power to express her feelings, and quite lost it in presence of 'the
gentry.' Having assured the poor soul that she need have no fear about
her tenancy, he was just leaving, when he met, in the stone-flagged
entrance, a lady in a fur cap and jacket, carrying in her arms a little
crying boy, bleeding from a cut on the forehead. Taking him from her and
placing him on a table in the parlour, Miltoun looked at this lady, and
saw that she was extremely grave, and soft, and charming. He inquired of
her whether the mother should be told.

She shook her head.

"Poor thing, not just now: let's wash it, and bin