“It will be difficult to attend.”  Her smile was faint and sad.  “But I will do my best.”

He took up a volume of Dean Church’s sermons, and began to read.  Presently, as always, his subtler self became conscious of the irony of the situation.  He was endeavoring to soothe her trouble by applying to it some of the noblest religious thought of our day, expressed in the noblest language.  Such an attempt implied some moral correspondence between the message and the listener.  Yet all the time he was conscious himself of cowardice and hypocrisy.  What part of the Christian message really applied to Lady Lucy this afternoon but the searching words:  “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”

Yet he read on.  The delicate ascetic face of his companion grew calmer; he himself felt a certain refreshment and rest.  There was no one else in the world with whom he could sit like this, to whom he could speak or read of the inner life.  Lucy Marsham had made him what he was, a childless bachelor, with certain memories in his past life of which he was ashamed—­representing the revenge of a strong man’s temperament and physical nature.  But in the old age she had all but reached, and he was approaching, she was still the one dear and indispensable friend.  If she must needs be harsh and tyrannical—­well, he must try and mitigate the effects, for herself and others.  But his utmost effort must restrain itself within certain limits.  He was not at all sure that if offended in some mortal point, she might not do without him.  But so long as they both lived, he could not do without her.

* * * * *

Early the following morning Alicia Drake appeared in Eaton Square, and by two o’clock Mrs. Fotheringham was also there.  She had rushed up from Leeds by the first possible train, summoned by Alicia’s letter.  Lady Lucy and her daughter held conference, and Miss Drake was admitted to their counsels.

“Of course, mamma,” said Isabel Fotheringham, “I don’t at all agree with you in the matter.  Nobody is responsible for their mothers and fathers.  We make ourselves.  But I shall not be sorry if the discovery frees Oliver from a marriage which would have been a rope round his neck.  She is a foolish, arrogant, sentimental girl, brought up on the most wrong-headed principles, and she could never have made a decent wife for him.  She will, I hope, have the sense to see it—­and he will be well out of it.”

“Oliver, at present, is very determined,” said Lady Lucy, in a tone of depression.

“Oh, well, of course, having just proposed to her, he must, of course, behave like a gentleman—­and not like a cad.  But she can’t possibly hold him to it.  You will write to her, mamma—­and so shall I.”

“We shall make him, I fear, very angry.”

“Oliver?  Well, there are moments in every family when it is no use shirking.  We have to think of Oliver’s career, and what he may do for his party, and for reform.  You think he proposed to her in that walk on the hill?” said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning to her cousin Alicia.