not be frightened, Peter. I--I was only joking."

"It is enough to frighten anybody when you go on like that," said
Peter, relieved, but angry. "Talking of prison, and rushing about all
over the world--I see no joke in that."

"Why should I be the only one who must not rush all over the world?"
said Lady Mary.

"You must know perfectly well it would be preposterous," said Peter,
sullenly, "to break up all your habits, and leave Barracombe and--and
all of us--and start a fresh life--at your age. And if this is how
you mock at me and all my plans, I'm sorry I ever took you into my
confidence at all. I might have known I should repent it," he said;
and a sob of angry resentment broke his voice.

"Indeed, I am not mocking at you, Peter," she said, sorely repentant
and ashamed of her outburst. "Forgive me, darling! I see it was--not
the moment. You do not understand. You are thinking only of Sarah, as
is natural just now. It was not the moment for me to be talking of
myself."

"You never used to be selfish," said Peter, thawing somewhat, as she
threw her arms about him, and rested her head against his shoulder.

She laughed rather sadly. "But perhaps I am growing selfish--in my old
age," said Peter's mother.

Later, Lady Mary sought John Crewys in the smoking-room. He sprang up,
smiled at her, and held out his hand.

"So Peter has been confiding his schemes to you?"

"How did you know?"

"I only guessed. When a man seeks a _tete-a-tete_ so earnestly, it is
generally to talk about himself. Did the schemes include--Sarah?"

"They include Sarah--marriage--travelling--London--change of every
kind."

"Already!" cried John, "Bravo, Peter! and hurray for one-and-twenty!
And you are free?"

"Oh, no; I am not to be free."

"What! Do his schemes include you?"

"Not altogether."

"That is surely illogical, if yours are to include him?"

She smiled faintly. "I am to be always here, to look after the place
when he and Sarah are travelling or in London. I am to live with his
aunts. He wants to be able to think of me as always waiting here to
welcome him home, as--as I have been all his life. Not actually in
this house, because--Sarah--my little Sarah--wouldn't like that, it
seems; but in the Dower House, close by."

"I see," said John. "How delightfully ingenuous, and how pleasingly
unselfish a very young man can sometimes be!"

"Ah! don't laugh at me, John," she said tremulously. "Indeed, just
now, I cannot bea