and Emmeline and
Edith Fleming, who figured as essential parts of the social event. She
meant Mr. and Mrs. Jervis, who, in the inconceivability of their absence
on Frances's Bay, wondered more than ever why their daughter Rosalind
found them so impossible. She meant Mr. Vereker and Mr. Norris from the
office, and their wives and children, and Anthony's secretary, Miss
Lathom. If Miss Lathom were not engaged to young George Vereker, she
soon would be, to judge by the behaviour of their indiscreet and
guileless faces.

Frances also meant her brother-in-law, Bartholomew, home from India for
good, and cherishing a new disease, more secret and more dangerous than
his cancer; she meant her brother Maurice, who was genuinely invalided,
who had come back from California for the last time and would never be
sent out anywhere again.

Dorothea had said: "Let's kill them all off in one awful day." Frances
had said: "Yes, but we must do it decently. We must be kind to them,
poor dears!"

Above all they must be decent to Grannie and the Aunties, and to Uncle
Morrie and Uncle Bartie. That was the only burden she had laid on her
children. It was a case of noblesse oblige; their youth constrained
them. They had received so much, and they had been let off so much; not
one of them had inherited the taint that made Maurice and Emmeline
Fleming and Bartie Harrison creatures diseased and irresponsible. They
could afford to be pitiful and merciful.

And now that the children were grown up Frances could afford to be
pitiful and merciful herself. She could even afford to be grateful to
the poor dears. She looked on Maurice and Emmeline and Bartie as
scapegoats, bearers of the hereditary taint, whose affliction left her
children clean. She thought of them more and more in this sacred and
sacrificial character. At fifty-two Frances could be gentle over the
things that had worried and irritated her at thirty-three. Like Anthony
she was still young and strong through the youth and strength of
her children.

And the poor dears were getting weak and old. Grannie was seventy-nine,
and Maurice, the youngest of that generation, was forty-nine, and he
looked sixty. Every year Frances was more acutely aware of their pathos,
their futility, their mortality. They would be broken and gone so soon
and so utterly, leaving no name, no sign or memorial of themselves; only
living in the memories of her children who would remain.

And, with an awful sense