Laying down my pen at 10.45 after completing my chapter, the telephone bell suddenly rang.  The maids had gone up to bed, so I went into the hall to take the call, or to put it through to Percy’s study, for the late calls are usually, of course, for him, from one of the offices.  But it was not for him.  It was Jane’s voice speaking.

‘Is that you, mother?’ she said, quite quietly and steadily.  ’There’s been an accident.  Oliver fell downstairs.  He fell backwards and broke his neck.  He died soon after the doctor came.’

The self-control, the quiet pluck of these modern girls!  Her voice hardly shook as she uttered the terrible words.

I sat down, trembling all over, and the tears rushed to my eyes.  My darling child, and her dear husband, cut off at the very outset of their mutual happiness, and in this awful way!  Those stairs—­I always hated them; they are so steep and narrow, and wind so sharply round a corner.

‘Oh, my darling,’ I said.  ’And the last train gone, so that I can’t be with you till the morning!  Is Clare there?’

‘Yes,’ said Jane.  ‘She’s lying down....  She fainted.’

My poor darling Clare!  So highly-strung, so delicate-fibred, far more like me than Jane is!  And I always had a suspicion that her feeling for dear Oliver went very deep—­deeper, possibly, than any of us ever guessed.  For, there is no doubt about it, poor Oliver did woo Clare; if he wasn’t in love with her he was very near it, before he went off at a tangent after Jane, who was something new, and therefore attractive to him, besides being thrown so much together in Paris when Jane was working for her father.  The dear child has put up a brave fight ever since the engagement, and her self-control has been wonderful, but she has not been her old self.  If it had not been for the unfortunate European conditions, I should have sent her abroad for a thorough change.  It was terrible for her to be on the spot when this awful accident happened.

‘My dear, dear child,’ I said, hardly able to speak, my voice shook so with crying.  ’I’ve no words....  Have you rung up Frank and Johnny?  I should like Frank to be with you to-night; I know he would wish it.’

‘No,’ said Jane.  ’It’s no use bothering them till to-morrow.  They can’t do anything.  Is daddy at home?...  You’ll tell him, then....  Good-night.’

’Oh, my darling, you mustn’t ring off yet, indeed you mustn’t.  Hold on while I tell daddy; he would hate not to speak to you at once about it.’

’No, he won’t need to speak to me.  He’ll have to get on to the Haste at once, and arrange a lot of things.  I can keep till the morning.  Good-night, mother.’

She rang off.  There is something terrible to me about telephone conversations, when they deal with intimate or tragic subjects; they are so remote, cold, impersonal, like typed letters; is it because one can’t watch the soul in the eyes of the person one is talking to?