“A servant, sir, from Beechcote Manor, He was told to wait for an answer.”

“I will send one.  Come when I ring.”

The butler departed, and Marsham went hurriedly into the inner room, closing the door behind him.  Ferrier and Lady Lucy were left, looking at each other in anxiety.  But before they could put it into words, Marsham reappeared, in evident agitation.  He hurried to the bell and rang it.

Lady Lucy pointedly made no inquiry.  But Ferrier spoke.

“No bad news, I hope?”

Marsham turned.

“She has been told?” he said, hoarsely, “Mrs. Colwood, her companion, speaks of ‘shock.’  I must go down at once.”

Lady Lucy said nothing.  She, too, had grown white.

The butler appeared.  Marsham asked for the Sunday trains, ordered some packing, went down-stairs to speak to the Beechcote messenger, and returned.

Ferrier retired into the farthest window, and Marsham approached his mother.

“Good-bye, mother.  I will write to you from Beechcote, where I shall stay at the little inn in the village.  Have you no kind word that I may carry with me?”

Lady Lucy looked at him steadily.

“I shall write myself to Miss Mallory, Oliver.”

His pallor gave place to a flush of indignation.

“Is it necessary to do anything so cruel, mother?”

“I shall not write cruelly.”

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Considering what you have made up your mind to do, I should have thought least said, soonest mended.  However, if you must, you must.  I can only prepare Diana for your letter and soften it when it comes.”

“In your new love, Oliver, have you quite forgotten the old?” Lady Lucy’s voice shook for the first time.

“I shall be only too glad to remember it, when you give me the opportunity,” he said, sombrely.

“I have not been a bad mother to you, Oliver.  I have claims upon you.”

He did not reply, and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick.  Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth?  But Oliver had never wanted for anything.  He had only to ask.  What right had she to thwart her husband’s decision?

“Good-bye, mother,” said Marsham again.  “If you are writing to Isabel you will, I suppose, discuss the matter with her.  She is not unlikely to side with you—­not for your reason, however—­but because of some silly nonsense about politics.  If she does, I beg she will not write to me.  It could only embitter matters.”

“I will give her your message.  Good-bye, Oliver.”  He left the room, with a gesture of farewell to Ferrier.

* * * * *