Anne’s companionship was not lively for her mother-in-law, but she was brightening in the near prospect of Miles’s return, and they had established habits that carried them well through the evening.  Anne covered screens and made scrap-books, and did other work for the bazaar; and Mrs. Poynsett cut out pictures, made suggestions, and had associations of her own with the combinations of which Anne had little notion.  Or she dictated letters which Anne wrote, and through all these was a kindly, peaceful spirit, most unlike the dreary alienation in which Cecil persevered.

To Cecil this seemed the anxious desire for her lawful rights.  She had been used to spend the greater part of the evening at the piano, but her awakened eyes perceived that this was a cover to Raymond’s conversations at his mother’s sofa; so she sat tying knots in stiff thread at her macrame lace pillow, making the bazaar a plea for nothing but work.  Raymond used to arm himself with the newspapers as the safest point d’appui, and the talk was happiest when it only languished, for it could do much worse.

“Shall you be at Sirenwood to-morrow, Cecil?” asked Mrs. Poynsett, as she was wheeled to her station by the fire after dinner.  “Will you kindly take charge of a little parcel for me?  One of the Miss Strangeways asked me to look for some old franks, so Anne and I have been turning out my drawers.”

“Are they for sale?” asked Raymond.

“Yes,” said Cecil.  “Bee Strangeways is collecting; she will pay for all that are new to her, and sell any duplicates.”

“Has she many?” asked Mrs. Poynsett, glad of this safe subject.

“Quantities; and very valuable ones.  Her grandfather knew everybody, and was in the Ministry.”

“Was he?” said Raymond, surprised.

“Lord Lorimer?” said Mrs. Poynsett.  “Not when I knew them.  He was an old-fashioned Whig, with some peculiar crotchets, and never could work with any Cabinet.”

“Beatrice told me he was,” said Cecil, stiffly.

“I rather think he was Master of the Buckhounds for a little while in the Grey Ministry,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “but he gave it up because he would not vote with ministers on the poor laws.”

“I knew I was not mistaken in saying he was in the Ministry,” said Cecil.

“The Master of the Buckhounds is not in the Cabinet, Cecil,” said her husband.

“I never said he was.  I said he was in office,” returned the infallible lady.

Mrs. Poynsett thought it well to interrupt by handing in an envelope franked by Sir Robert Peel; but Cecil at once declared that the writing was different from that which Bee already owned.

“Perhaps it is not the same Sir Robert,” said Mrs. Poynsett.

“She got it from the Queen, and they are all authenticated.  The Queen newspaper, of course” (rather petulantly).

“Indisputable,” said Raymond; “but this frank contained a letter from the second Sir Robert to my father.”