telephone it to me.
And at her daughter's kiss, she added grimly:

"I shall live to see him in the saddle yet, though I am seventy-eight."

When the sound of her daughter's car had died away, she rang the bell.

"If Lady Valleys rings up, Clifton, don't take the message, but call me."
And seeing that Clifton did not move she added sharply: "Well?"

"There is no bad news of his young lordship's health, I hope?"

"No."

"Forgive me, my lady, but I have had it on my mind for some time to ask
you something."

And the old man raised his hand with a peculiar dignity, seeming to say:
You will excuse me that for the moment I am a human being speaking to a
human being.

"The matter of his attachment," he went on, "is known to me; it has given
me acute anxiety, knowing his lordship as I do, and having heard him say
something singular when he was here in July. I should be grateful if you
would assure--me that there is to be no hitch in his career, my lady."

The expression on Lady Casterley's face was strangely compounded of
surprise, kindliness, defence, and impatience as with a child.

"Not if I can prevent it, Clifton," she said shortly; "in fact, you need
not concern yourself."

Clifton bowed.

"Excuse me mentioning it, my lady;" a quiver ran over his face between
its long white whiskers, "but his young lordship's career is more to me
than my own."

When he had left her, Lady Casterley sat down in a little low chair--long
she sat there by the empty hearth, till the daylight, was all gone.

CHAPTER XX

Not far from the dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that bugbear
of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he himself had a
couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week. Their chief attraction was
that the great Half-Truth Liberty had recommended them. They tied him to
nothing, and were ever at his disposal when he was in London; for his
landlady, though not bound by agreement so to do, let them in such a way,
that she could turn anyone else out at a week's notice. She was a gentle
soul, married to a socialistic plumber twenty years her senior. The
worthy man had given her two little boys, and the three of them kept her
in such permanent order that to be in the presence of Courtier was the
greatest pleasure she knew. When he disappeared on one of his nomadic
missions, explorations, or adventures, she enclosed the whole of his
belongings in two tin trunks and placed them in a cupboa