“I should have wished him to exhibit proper feeling on proper occasions.  His present triumph over my authority involves his departure to certain danger and possible death, without even affording us the opportunity of bidding him farewell.  He is ready and willing to leave us thus.”

Lady Mary uttered a stifled scream.  “But I won’t let him.  How can you think his mother will let him go like that?”

“How can you help it?”

She pressed her trembling hands to her forehead.  “I will think.  There is a way.  There are plenty of ways.  I can drive to the junction—­it’s not much further than Brawnton—­and catch the midnight express, and get to Southampton by daybreak.  I know it can be done.  Ash will look out the trains.  Why do you look at me like that?  You’re not going to stop my going, are you?  You’re not going to try and stop me, are you?  For you won’t succeed.  Oh yes, I know I’ve been an obedient wife, Timothy.  But I—­I defied you once before for Peter’s sake; when he was such a little boy, and you wanted to punish him—­don’t you remember?”

“Don’t talk so, Mary,” said Sir Timothy, almost soothingly.  Her vehemence really alarmed and distressed him.  “It is not like you to talk like this.  You will be sorry—­afterwards,” he said; and his voice softened.

She responded instantly.  She came closer to him, and took his big shaking hand into her gentle clasp.

“I should be sorry afterwards,” she said, “and so would you.  Even you would be sorry, Timothy, if anything happened to Peter.  I’ll try and not make any more excuses for him, if you like.  I know he’s not a child now.  He’s almost a man; and men seem to me to grow harsh and unloving as they grow older.  I try, now and then, to shut my eyes and see him as he once was; but all the time I know that the little boy who used to be Peter has gone away for ever and ever and ever.  If he had died when he was little he would always have been my little boy, wouldn’t he?  But, thank God, he didn’t die.  He’s going to be a great strong man, and a brave soldier, and—­and all I’ve ever wanted him to be—­when he’s got over these wilful days of boyhood.  But he mustn’t go without his father’s blessing and his mother’s kiss.”

“He has chosen to do so, Mary,” said Sir Timothy, coldly.

She clung to him caressingly.  “But you’re going to forgive him before he goes, Timothy.  There’s no time to be angry before he goes.  It may be too late to-morrow.”

“It may be too late to-morrow,” repeated Sir Timothy, heavily.

He resented, in a dull, self-pitying fashion, the fact that his wife’s thoughts were so exclusively fixed on Peter, in her ignorance of his own more immediate danger.