As for Rose, that child of misfortune did well during the first four days of the examination, but on the fifth day one of her chronic sick-headaches had in two hours nullified all the intense and ceaseless effort of two years.  It was precisely in chemistry that she had failed.  She arrived from London in tears, and the tears were renewed when the formal announcement of defeat came three weeks later by telegraph and John added gaiety to the occasion by remarking:  ‘What did I tell you?’ The girl’s proud and tenacious spirit, weakened by the long strain, was daunted at last.  She lounged in the house and garden, listless, supine, torpid, instinctively waiting for Nature’s recovery.

Millicent alone in the house was unreservedly cheerful and light-hearted.  She had the advantage of Mr. Corfe’s instruction for two hours every Wednesday, and expressed herself as well satisfied with his methods.  Her own intimate friends knew that she quite intended to go on the stage, but they were enjoined to say nothing.  Consequently John Stanway was one of the few people in Bursley unaware of the definiteness of Milly’s private plans; Leonora was another.  Leonora sometimes felt that Milly’s assertive and indestructible vivacity must be due to some specific cause, but Mr. Cecil Corfe’s reputation for seriousness and discretion precluded the idea that he was encouraging the girl to dream dreams without the consent of her parents.

Leonora might have questioned Milly, but she perceived the futility of doing so.  It became more and more clear to her that she did not possess the confidence of her daughters.  They loved her and they admired her; and she for her part made a point of trusting them; but their confidence was withheld.  Under the influence of Arthur Twemlow she had tried to assuage the customary asperities of home life, so far as possible, by a demeanour of generous quick acquiescence, and she had not entirely failed.  Yet the girls, with all the obtuseness and insensibility of adolescence, never thought of giving her the one reward which she desired.  She sought tremulously to win their intimacy, but she sought too late.  Rose and Milly simply ignored her diffident advances, and even Ethel was not responsive.  Leonora had trained up her children as she herself had been trained.  She saw her error only when it could not be retrieved.  The dear but transient vision of four women who had no secrets from each other, who understood each other, was finally dissolved.

Amid the secret desolation of a life which however was not without love, amid her vain regrets for an irrecoverable youth and her horror of the approach of age, amid the empty lassitudes which apparently were all that remained of the excitement caused by Arthur Twemlow’s presence, Leonora found a mournful and sweet pleasure in imagining that she had a son.  This son combined the best qualities of Harry Burgess and Fred Ryley.  She made him tall as herself, handsome as herself, and like herself elegant.