r it."

"Laugh at you, my queen--my saint! How little you know me!" said John,
tenderly. "It was at Peter that I was presuming to smile."

"Is it a laughing matter?" she said wistfully.

"I think it will be, Mary."

"I tried so hard to tell him," said Lady Mary, "but I couldn't.
Somehow he made it impossible. He looks upon me as quite, quite old."

John laughed outright. A laugh that rang true even to Lady Mary's
sensitive perceptions.

"But didn't _you_ look upon everybody over thirty as, quite old when
you were one-and-twenty? I'm sure I did."

"Perhaps. But yet--I don't know. I am his mother. It is natural he
should feel so. He made me realize how preposterous it was for me,
the mother of a grown-up son, to be thinking selfishly of my own
happiness, as though I were a young, fresh girl just starting life."

"I had hoped," said John, quietly, "that you might be thinking a
little of my happiness too."

"Oh, John! But your happiness and mine seemed all the same thing," she
said ingenuously. "Yet he thinks of my life as finished; and I was
thinking of it as though it were beginning all over again. He made
me feel so ashamed, so conscience-stricken." She hid her face in her
hands. "How could I tell him?"

"I think," said John, "that the time has come when he must be told. I
meant to put it off until he attained his majority; but since he has
broached the subject of your leaving this house himself, he has given
us the best opportunity possible. And I also think--that the telling
had better be left to me."

CHAPTER XVIII

John Crewys stood on the walk below the terrace, with Peter by his
side, enjoying an after-breakfast smoke, and watching a party of
sportsmen climbing up the bracken-clothed slopes of the opposite
hillside. A dozen beaters were toiling after the guns, among whom
the short and sturdy figure of Colonel Hewel was very plainly to be
distinguished. A boy was leading a pony-cart for the game.

Sarah had accepted an invitation to dine and spend the evening with
her beloved Lady Mary at Barracombe; but Peter had another appointment
with her besides, of which Lady Mary knew nothing. He was to meet her
at the ferry, and picnic on the moor at the top of the hill, on his
side of the river. But through all the secret joy and triumph that
possessed him at the remembrance of this rendezvous, he could not but
sigh as he watched the little procession of sportsmen opposite, and
almost involuntaril