1880 match
at Lord's, with a battered top-hat, a blackened eye, and a cane with
a light-blue tassel. She saw him deadly pale with tightened lips that
afternoon after he had escaped from her, half cured of laryngitis, and
stolen out shooting by himself, and she remembered his words: "Well,
Mother, I couldn't stand it any longer; it was too beastly slow!"

Suppose he could not stand it now! Suppose he should do something rash!
She took out her handkerchief.

"It's very hot in here, dear; your forehead is quite wet!"

She saw his eyes turn on her suspiciously, and all her woman's wit stole
into her own eyes, so that they did not flicker, but looked at him with
matter-of-fact concern.

"That skylight is what does it," he said. "The sun gets full on there."

Mrs. Pendyce looked at the skylight.

"It seems odd to see you here, dear, but it's very nice--so
unconventional. You must let me put away those poor flowers!" She went
to the silver cup and bent over them. "My dear boy, they're quite nasty!
Do throw them outside somewhere; it's so dreadful, the smell of old
flowers!"

She held the cup out, covering her nose with her handkerchief.

George took the cup, and like a cat spying a mouse, Mrs. Pendyce watched
him take it out into the garden. As the door closed, quicker, more
noiseless than a cat, she slipped behind the curtains.

'I know he has a pistol,' she thought.

She was back in an instant, gliding round the room, hunting with her
eyes and hands, but she saw nothing, and her heart lightened, for she
was terrified of all such things.

'It's only these terrible first hours,' she thought.

When George came back she was standing where he had left her. They
sat down in silence, and in that silence, the longest of her life, she
seemed to feel all that was in his heart, all the blackness and bitter
aching, the rage of defeat and starved possession, the lost delight,
the sensation of ashes and disgust; and yet her heart was full enough
already of relief and shame, compassion, jealousy, love, and deep
longing. Only twice was the silence broken. Once when he asked her
whether she had lunched, and she who had eaten nothing all day answered:

"Yes, dear--yes."

Once when he said:

"You shouldn't have come here, Mother; I'm a bit out of sorts!"

She watched his face, dearest to her in all the world, bent towards the
floor, and she so yearned to hold it to her breast that, since she
dared not, the tears stole up, a