Summerhay, looking down at her gloomily, answered:

"I've got bad news for you, Mother."

Lady Summerhay closed the book and searched his face with apprehension.
She knew that expression. She knew that poise of his head, as if butting
at something. He looked like that when he came to her in gambling
scrapes. Was this another? Bryan had always been a pickle. His next
words took her breath away.

"The people at Mildenham, Major Winton and his daughter--you know. Well,
I'm in love with her--I'm--I'm her lover."

Lady Summerhay uttered a gasp.

"But--but--Bryan--"

"That fellow she married drinks. He's impossible. She had to leave him a
year ago, with her baby--other reasons, too. Look here, Mother: This is
hateful, but you'd got to know. I can't talk of her. There's no chance
of a divorce." His voice grew higher. "Don't try to persuade me out of
it. It's no good."

Lady Summerhay, from whose comely face a frock, as it were, had slipped,
clasped her hands together on the book.

Such a swift descent of "life" on one to whom it had for so long been
a series of "cases" was cruel, and her son felt this without quite
realizing why. In the grip of his new emotions, he still retained enough
balance to appreciate what an abominably desolate piece of news this
must be to her, what a disturbance and disappointment. And, taking her
hand, he put it to his lips.

"Cheer up, Mother! It's all right. She's happy, and so am I."

Lady Summerhay could only press her hand against his kiss, and murmur:

"Yes; that's not everything, Bryan. Is there--is there going to be a
scandal?"

"I don't know. I hope not; but, anyway, HE knows about it."

"Society doesn't forgive."

Summerhay shrugged his shoulders.

"Awfully sorry for YOU, Mother."

"Oh, Bryan!"

This repetition of her plaint jarred his nerves.

"Don't run ahead of things. You needn't tell Edith or Flo. You needn't
tell anybody. We don't know what'll happen yet."

But in Lady Summerhay all was too sore and blank. This woman she had
never seen, whose origin was doubtful, whose marriage must have soiled
her, who was some kind of a siren, no doubt. It really was too hard! She
believed in her son, had dreamed of public position for him, or, rather,
felt he would attain it as a matter of course. And she said feebly:

"This Major Winton is a man of breeding, isn't he?"

"Rather!" And, stopping before her, as if he read her thoughts, he
added: "You think she's not goo