be so. His few intimates in London were not in
the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.

And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
of whom it was old.

Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
honorable conduct, her anxiety about his future with her child, her
painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
seemed to her that she could not.

She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.

So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She a