“I don’t see why you should laugh,” said Peter, in a rather sore tone.  “I don’t know how it is, but I never can understand you, mother.”

“I see you can’t.  Never mind, Peter,” said Lady Mary.  She sat up, and lifted her pretty hands to smooth the soft waves of her brown hair.  “So I’m to settle down happily in my Dower House, and take your aunts to live with me?”

“Why, you see,” said Peter, “we couldn’t very well let the poor old things wander away alone into the world, could we?”

“I think,” said Lady Mary, slowly, “that they can take care of themselves.  And it is just possible that they may have foreseen—­your change of intentions.”

“Women can never take care of themselves,” said Peter.  “And how can they have foreseen?  I had no idea myself of this happening.  But they would be perfectly happy in the Dower House; it is close by, and I could see them very often.  It wouldn’t be like leaving Barracombe.”

“Yes, I think they could be happy there,” said Lady Mary.  She felt that the moment had come at last.  Her heart beat thickly, and her colour came and went.  “But if they were happily settled at the Dower House,” she said slowly, for her agitation was making her breathless, and she did not want Peter to notice it,”—­I would willingly give it up to them altogether.  It could not matter whether I were there or not.  Though they are old, they are perfectly able to look after themselves—­and other people; and if they were not, they would not like me to take care of them.  They have their own servants and Mrs. Ash.  And they have never liked me, Peter, though we have lived together so many years.”

“That is nonsense,” said Peter, very calmly; “and if they don’t want you there, mother, I do.  Of course you must live at the Dower House; my father left it to you.  And I shall want you more than ever now.”

“I don’t see how,” said Lady Mary.

“Why, we—­Sarah and I,” said Peter, lingering fondly over the words which linked that beloved name with his own, “if we ever—­if it ever came off—­we shall naturally be away from home a good deal.  I couldn’t ask Sarah to tie herself down to this dull old place, could I?”

“I suppose not,” said Lady Mary.

“She’s accustomed to going about the world a good deal,” said Peter.

“No doubt.”

“Even I,” said Peter, turning a flushed face towards his mother—­“I am too young, as Sarah says—­and I feel it myself since I have seen something of the life she lives—­to become a complete fixture, like my father was.  It’s—­it’s, as Sarah says—­it’s narrowing.  I can see the effects of it upon you all,” said Peter, calmly, “when I come back here.”

He could not fathom the wistfulness which clouded the blue eyes she lifted to his face.

“It is very narrowing,” she said humbly.

“One may devote one’s self to one’s duties as a landed proprietor,” said Peter, with another recurrence of pomposity, “and yet see something of one’s fellow-men.”