She was not at all hurt by Ethel’s impassioned taunt, but rather amused, indulgently amused, that the girl should have so misread her.  She felt more maternal, protective, and tender towards Ethel than she had ever felt since the first year of Ethel’s existence.  She seemed perfectly to comprehend, and she nobly excused, the sudden outbreak of violence and disrespect on the part of her languid, soft-eyed daughter.  She thought with confidence that all would come right in the end, and vaguely she determined that in some undefined way she would help Ethel, would yet demonstrate to this child of hers that she understood and sympathised.  The interview which had just terminated, futile, conflicting, desultory, muddled, tentative, and abrupt as life itself, appeared to her in the light of a positive achievement.  She was not unhappy about it, nor about anything.  Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to disturb her.

‘I want to tell you something, Jack,’ she began, when her husband at length came home.

‘Who’s been drinking whisky?’ was Stanway’s only reply as he glanced at the table.

’Harry brought the girls home.  I dare say he had some.  I didn’t notice,’ she said.

‘H’m!’ Stanway muttered gloomily, ’he’s young enough to start that game.’

‘I’ll see it isn’t offered to him again, if you like,’ said Leonora.  ‘But I want to tell you something, Jack.’

‘Well?’ He was thoughtlessly cutting a piece of cheese into small squares with the silver butter-knife.

‘Only you must promise not to say a word to a soul.’

‘I shall promise no such thing,’ he said with uncompromising bluntness.

She smiled charmingly upon him.  ‘Oh yes, Jack, you will, you must.’

He seemed to be taken unawares by her sudden smile.  ‘Very well,’ he said gruffly.

She then told him, in the manner she thought best, of the relations between Ethel and Fred Ryley, and she pointed out to him that, if he had reflected at all upon the relations between Harry Burgess and Millicent, he would not have fallen into the error of connecting Milly, instead of her sister, with Fred.

‘What relations between Milly and young Burgess?’ he questioned stolidly.

‘Why, Jack,’ she said, ’you know as much as I do.  Why does Harry come here so often?’

’He’d better not come here so often.  What’s Milly?  She’s nothing but a child.’

Leonora made no attempt to argue with him.  ‘As for Ethel,’ she said softly, ‘she’s at a difficult age, and you must be careful——­’

‘As for Ethel,’ he interrupted, ’I’ll turn Fred Ryley out of my office to-morrow.’

She tried to look grave and sympathetic, to use all her tact.  ’But won’t that make difficulties with Uncle Meshach?  And people might say you had dismissed him because Uncle Meshach had altered his will.’

‘D——­n Fred Ryley!’ he swore, unable to reply to this.  ‘D——­n him!’