She grew red and white by turns.  Was John’s happiness in sight already, as well as Peter’s?

“It’s—­it’s most awfully hard to tell you,” said Peter.

He rose, and leant his elbow against the stone mullion nearest her, looking down anxiously upon her as he spoke.

“After all I said to you when we first came home, it’s awfully hard.  But if you would only understand, you could make it all easy enough.”

“I will—­I do understand.”

But Peter could not make up his mind even now to be explicit.

“You see,” he said, “Sarah is—­not like other girls.”

“Of course not,” said his mother.

She controlled her impatience, reminding herself that Peter was very young, and that he had never been in love before.

“She’s a kind of—­of queen,” said Peter, dreamily.  “I only wish you could have seen what it was in London.”

“I can imagine it,” said Lady Mary.

“No, you couldn’t.  I hadn’t an idea what she would be there, until I went to London and saw for myself,” said Peter, who measured everybody’s imagination by his own.

“You see,” he explained “my position here, which seems so important to you and the other people round here, and used to seem so important to me—­is—­just nothing at all compared to what has been cast at her feet, as it were, over and over again, for her to pick up if she chose.  And this house,” said Peter, glancing round and shaking his head—­“this house, which seems so beautiful to you now it’s all done up, if you’d only seen the houses she’s accustomed to staying at.  Tintern Castle, for instance—­”

“I was born in a greater house than Tintern Castle, Peter,” said Lady Mary, gently.

“Oh, of course.  I’m saying nothing against Ferries,” said Peter, impatiently.  “But you only lived there as a child.  A child doesn’t notice.”

“Some children don’t,” said Lady Mary, with that faint, wondering smile which hid her pain from Peter, and would have revealed it so clearly to John.

“It isn’t that Sarah minds this old house,” said Peter; “she was saying what a pretty room she could make of the drawing-room only the other day.”

Lady Mary felt an odd pang at her heart.  She thought of the trouble John had taken to choose the best of the water-colours for the rose-tinted room—­the room he had declared so bright and so charming—­of the pretty curtains and chintzes; and the valuable old china she had collected from every part of the house for the cabinets.

“You see, she’s got that sort of thing at her fingers’ ends, Lady Tintern being such a connoisseur,” said the unconscious Peter.  “But she’s so afraid of hurting your feelings—­”

“Why should she be?” said Lady Mary, coldly, in spite of herself.  “If she does not like the drawing-room, she can easily alter it.”

“That’s what I say,” said Peter, with a touch of his father’s pomposity.  “Surely a bride has a right to look forward to arranging her home as she chooses.  And Sarah is mad about old French furniture—­Louis Seize, I think it is—­but I know nothing about such things.  I think a man should leave the choice of furniture, and all that, to his wife—­especially when her taste happens to be as good as Sarah’s.”