He roused himself with an effort.  His mother was putting up her knitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at.

“We must go and dress, Oliver.  Oh!  I forgot to tell you—­Alicia arrived an hour ago.”

“Ah!” He raised his eyebrows indifferently.  “I hope she’s well?”

“Brilliantly well—­and as handsome as ever.”

“Any love-affairs?”

“Several, apparently—­but nothing suitable,” said Lady Lucy, with a smile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions.

“It’s time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind.  She has been out a good while.”

It gave him a curious pleasure—­he could hardly tell why—­to say this slighting thing of Alicia.  After all, he had no evidence that she had done anything unfriendly or malicious at the time of the crisis.  Instinctively, he had ranged her then and since as an enemy—­as a person who had worked against him.  But, in truth, he knew nothing for certain.  Perhaps, after the foolish passages between them a year ago, it was natural that she should dislike and be critical of Diana.  As to her coming now, it was completely indifferent to him.  It would be a good thing, no doubt, for his mother to have her companionship.

As he opened the door for Lady Lucy to leave the room, he noticed her gray and fragile look.

“I believe you have had enough of London, mother.  You ought to be getting abroad.”

“I am all right,” said Lady Lucy, hastily.  “Like you, I hate east winds.  Oliver, I have had a charming letter from Mr. Heath.”

Mr. Heath had been for some months Marsham’s local correspondent on the subject of the new Liberal hall in the county town.  Lady Lucy had recently sent a check to the Committee, which had set all their building anxieties at rest.

Oliver looked down rather moodily upon her.

“It’s pretty easy to write charming letters when people send you money.  It would have been more to the purpose, I think, if they had taken a little trouble to raise some themselves!”

Lady Lucy flushed.

“I don’t suppose Dunscombe is a place with many rich people in it,” she said, in a voice of protest, as she passed him.  Her thoughts hurt her as she mounted the stairs.  Oliver had not received her gift—­for, after all, it was a gift to him—­very graciously.  And the same might have been said of various other things that she had tried to do for him during the preceding months.

As to Marsham, while he dressed, he too recalled other checks that had been recently paid for him, other anxious attempts that had been made to please him.  Since Diana had vanished from the scene, no complaisance, no liberality had been too much for his mother’s good-will.  He had never been so conscious of an atmosphere of money—­much money.  And there were moments—­what he himself would have described as morbid moments—­when it seemed to him the price of blood; when he felt himself