“Show him up, please....  Ah there you are, David.  We must both talk rather low as mother is easily waked.  Come into my study; fortunately it is at the other end of the flat.”

* * * * *

They reach the study, and Honoria closes the door softly but firmly behind them.

“We never do kiss as a rule, having long ago given up such a messy form of greeting; but certainly we wouldn’t under these circumstances lest we could be seen from the opposite windows and thought to be ‘engaged’; but though I may seem a little frigid in greeting you, it is only because of the clothes you are wearing’—­You understand, don’t you—?”

“Quite, dearest.  We cannot be too careful.  Besides we long ago agreed to be modern and sanitary in our manners.”

“Won’t you smoke?”

“Well, perhaps it would be more restful,” said David, “more manly; but as a matter of fact of late I have been rather ‘off’ smoking.  It is very wasteful, and as far as I am concerned it never produced much effect—­either way—­on the nerves.  Still, it gives one a nice manly flavour.  I always liked the smell of a smoking-room....  And your mother:  how is she?”

“Very bad, I fear.  The doctor tells me she can’t last much longer, and hypocritical as the phrase sounds I couldn’t wish her to, unless these pains can be mitigated, and this dreadful distress in breathing....  I wonder if some day I shall be like that, and if behind my back a daughter will be saying she couldn’t wish me to live much longer, unless, etc.  I shall miss her frightfully, if she does die....  Armstrong has been more than kind.  He has got a woman’s heart for tenderness.  He thinks every day of some fresh palliative until the doctors quite dislike him.  Fortunately his kindness gives mother a fleeting gleam of pleasure.  She wants me to marry him—­I don’t know, I’m sure....  Whilst she’s so bad I don’t feel I could take any interest in love-making—­and I suppose we should make love in a perfunctory way—­We’re all of us so bound by conventions.  We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating.  And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho!  What should you say if I did marry—­Major Armstrong...?  Did you ever hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth?  I should have to call him ‘Pet’ and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle age.  How can parents be so unthinking about Christian names?  He can’t see the thing as I do; it is almost the only subject on which he is ‘huffy.’ You are the other, about which more anon.  He says the Petworth property meant everything to the Armstrongs, to his branch of the Armstrongs.  But for that, they might have been any other kind of Armstrong—­it always kept him straight at school and in the army, he says, to remember he was an Armstrong of Petworth.  They have held that poor little property (I call it) alongside the Egmonts and the Leconfields for three hundred years, though they’ve been miserably poor.  His second name is James—­Petworth James Armstrong.  But he loathes being called ‘Jimmy.’