ace was strangely compounded of
surprise, kindliness, defence, and impatience as with a child.

"Not if I can prevent it, Clifton," she said shortly; "in fact, you need
not concern yourself."

Clifton bowed.

"Excuse me mentioning it, my lady;" a quiver ran over his face between
its long white whiskers, "but his young lordship's career is more to me
than my own."

When he had left her, Lady Casterley sat down in a little low
chair--long she sat there by the empty hearth, till the daylight, was
all gone.

CHAPTER XX

Not far from the dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that
bugbear of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he
himself had a couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week. Their chief
attraction was that the great Half-Truth Liberty had recommended them.
They tied him to nothing, and were ever at his disposal when he was in
London; for his landlady, though not bound by agreement so to do, let
them in such a way, that she could turn anyone else out at a week's
notice. She was a gentle soul, married to a socialistic plumber twenty
years her senior. The worthy man had given her two little boys, and
the three of them kept her in such permanent order that to be in
the presence of Courtier was the greatest pleasure she knew. When he
disappeared on one of his nomadic missions, explorations, or adventures,
she enclosed the whole of his belongings in two tin trunks and placed
them in a cupboard which smelled a little of mice. When he reappeared
the trunks were reopened, and a powerful scent of dried rose-leaves
would escape. For, recognizing the mortality of things human, she
procured every summer from her sister, the wife of a market gardener, a
consignment of this commodity, which she passionately sewed up in bags,
and continued to deposit year by year, in Courtier's trunks.

This, and the way she made his toast--very crisp--and aired his
linen--very dry, were practically the only things she could do for a man
naturally inclined to independence, and accustomed from his manner of
life to fend for himself.

At first signs of his departure she would go into some closet or other,
away from the plumber and the two marks of his affection, and cry
quietly; but never in Courtier's presence did she dream of manifesting
grief--as soon weep in the presence of death or birth, or any other
fundamental tragedy or joy. In face of the realities of life she had
known from her youth up the value of