“The whole case!” said John.  “But, my dear fellow, that’s only half the case.”

“What do you mean?”

“The other half,” said John, “is the case from her point of view.”

“I don’t see,” said Peter, “how her point of view can be different from mine.”

John’s thoughts flew back to a February evening, more than two years earlier.  It seemed to him that Sir Timothy stood before him, surprised, pompous, argumentative.  But he saw only Peter, looking at him with his father’s grey eyes set in a boy’s thin face.

“My experience as a barrister,” he said, with a curious sense of repeating himself, “has taught me that it is possible for two persons to take diametrically opposite views of the same question.”

“And what happens then?” said Peter, stupidly.

“Our bread and butter.”

“But why should my mother leave the place she’s lived in for years and years, and go gadding about all over the world—­at her time of life?  I don’t see what can be said for the wisdom of that?”

“Nothing from your point of view, I dare say,” said John.  “Much from hers.  If you are willing to listen, and if,” he added smiling, as an afterthought, “you will promise not to interrupt?”

“Well,” said Peter, rather doubtfully, “all right, I promise.  You won’t be long, I suppose?”

He glanced stealthily down towards the ferry, though he knew that Sarah would not be there for a couple of hours at least, and that he could reach it in less than ten minutes.  But half the pleasure of meeting Sarah consisted in waiting for her at the trysting-place.

John observed the glance, and smiled imperceptibly.  He took out his watch.

“I shall speak,” he said, carefully examining it, “for four minutes.”

“Let’s sit,” said Peter.  “It’s warm enough now, in all conscience.”

They sat upon an old stone bench below the turret.  Peter leant back with his black head resting against the wall, his felt hat tipped over his eyes and his pipe in his mouth.  He looked comfortable, even good-humoured.

“Go ahead,” he murmured.

“To understand the case from your mother’s point of view, I am afraid it is necessary,” said John, “to take a rapid glance at the circumstances of her life which have—­which have made her what she is.  She came here, as a child, didn’t she, when her father died; and though he had just succeeded to the earldom, he died a very poor man?  Your father, as her guardian, spared no pains, nor expense for that matter, in educating and maintaining her.  When she was barely seventeen years old, he married her.”

There was a slight dryness in John’s voice as he made the statement, which accounted for the gruffness of Peter’s acquiescence.