that her versatile husband was unique among his sex.  The fading of a short-lived and factitious passion, the descent of the unique male to the ordinary level of males, the births of her three girls and their rearing and training:  all these things seemed as trifles to her, mere excrescences and depressions in the vast tableland of her monotonous and placid career.  She had had no career.  Her strength of will, of courage, of love, had never been taxed; only her patience.  ’And my life is over!’ she told herself, insisting that her life was over without being able to believe it.

As the dog-cart was crossing the railway bridge at Shawport, at the foot of the rise to Hillport, Leonora overtook her eldest daughter.  She drew up.  From the height of the dog-cart she looked at her child; and the girlishness of Ethel’s form, the self-consciousness of newly-arrived womanhood in her innocent and timid eyes, the virgin richness of her vitality, made Leonora feel sad, superior, and protective.

‘Oh, mother!  Where’s father?’ Ethel exclaimed, staring at her, struck with a foolish wonder to see her mother where her father had been an hour before.

‘What a schoolgirl she is!  And at her age I was a mother twice over!’ thought Leonora; but she said aloud:  ’Jump up quickly, my dear.  You know Prince won’t stand.’

Ethel obeyed, awkwardly.  As she did so the mother scrutinised the rather lanky figure, the long dark skirt, the pale blouse, and the straw hat, in a single glance that missed no detail.  Leonora was not quite dissatisfied; Ethel carried herself tolerably, she resembled her mother; she had more distinction than her sisters, but her manner was often lackadaisical.

‘Your father was very vexed about something,’ said Leonora, when she had recounted the meeting at the top of Oldcastle Street.  ‘Where’s Milly?’

‘I don’t know, mother—­I think she went out for a walk.’  The girl added apprehensively:  ‘Why?’

‘Oh, nothing!’ said Leonora, pretending not to observe that Ethel had blushed.  ’If I were you, Ethel, I should let that belt out one hole ... not here, my dear child, not here.  When you get home.  How was Aunt Hannah?’

Every day one member or another of John Stanway’s family had to pay a visit to John’s venerable Aunt Hannah, who lived with her brother, the equally venerable Uncle Meshach, in a little house near the parish church of St. Luke’s.  This was a social rite the omission of which nothing could excuse.  On that day it was Ethel who had called.

’Auntie was all right.  She was making a lot of parkin, and of course I had to taste it, all new, you know.  I’m simply stodged.’

‘Don’t say “stodged."’

‘Oh, mother!  You won’t let us say anything,’ Ethel dismally protested; and Leonora secretly sympathised with the grown woman in revolt.

’Oh!  And Aunt Hannah wishes you many happy returns.  Uncle Meshach came back from the Isle of Man last night.  He gave me a note for you.  Here it is.’