o the children that they would have great
larks now that auntie was home again. Ferdy asked if she had been with
mummy, but didn't wait for an answer, and she observed that they put no
question about their mother and made no further allusion to her while
they remained in the room. She wondered whether their father had
enjoined upon them not to mention her, and reflected that even if he had
such a command would not have been efficacious. It added to the ugliness
of Selina's flight that even her children didn't miss her, and to the
dreariness, somehow, to Laura's sense, of the whole situation that one
could neither spend tears on the mother and wife, because she was not
worth it, nor sentimentalise about the little boys, because they didn't
inspire it. 'Well, you do look seedy--I'm bound to say that!' Lionel
exclaimed; and he recommended strongly a glass of port, while Ferdy, not
seizing this reference, suggested that daddy should take her by the
waistband and teach her to 'strike out.' He represented himself in the
act of drowning, but Laura interrupted this entertainment, when the
servant answered the bell (Lionel having rung for the port), by
requesting that the children should be conveyed to Miss Steet. 'Tell her
she must never go away again,' Lionel said to Geordie, as the butler
took him by the hand; but the only touching consequence of this
injunction was that the child piped back to his father, over his
shoulder, 'Well, you mustn't either, you know!'

'You must tell me or I'll kill myself--I give you my word!' Laura said
to her brother-in-law, with unnecessary violence, as soon as they had
left the room.

'I say, I say,' he rejoined, 'you _are_ a wilful one! What do you want
to threaten me for? Don't you know me well enough to know that ain't the
way? That's the tone Selina used to take. Surely you don't want to begin
and imitate her!' She only sat there, looking at him, while he leaned
against the chimney-piece smoking a short cigar. There was a silence,
during which she felt the heat of a certain irrational anger at the
thought that a little ignorant, red-faced jockey should have the luck to
be in the right as against her flesh and blood. She considered him
helplessly, with something in her eyes that had never been there
before--something that, apparently, after a moment, made an impression
on him. Afterwards, however, she saw very well that it was not her
threat that had moved him, and even at the moment she h