It was strange to look down instead of up at those dark eyes, those brows which lay straight black bars save for that slight piratical twist, with no intervening arch between them and the dusky eyelids.  It was strange to hear Richard’s voice coming from a figure blurred with soft, rich, feminine clothes.  It was strange to see her passing through just such a moment of impeded tenderness as Richard often underwent.  Plainly she wanted to kiss Ellen, but was prevented by an intense physical reserve, and did not want to shake hands, since that was inadequate, and this conflict gave her for a minute a stiff queerness of attitude.  She compromised by taking Ellen’s left hand in her own left hand, and giving it what was evidently a sincere, but not spontaneous pressure.  Then, turning away, she asked, “What about your luggage?”

“I’ve just this suitcase.  I sent the rest in advance.  Do you not think that’s the most sensible way?” said Ellen, in a tone intended to convey that she was not above taking advice from an older woman.

Mrs. Yaverland made a vague, purring noise, which seemed to imply that she found material consideration too puzzling for discussion, and commanded the porter with one of those slow, imperative gestures that Richard made when he wanted people to do things.  Walking down the platform, Ellen wondered why Richard always called her a little thing.  His mother was far smaller than she was, and broad-shouldered too, which made her look dumpy.  Her resemblance to Richard became marked again when they got into the taxi, and she dealt with the porter and the driver with just such quiet murmured commands and dippings into pockets of loose change as Richard on these occasions, but Ellen did not find it in the least endearing.  She was angry that Richard was like that, not because he was himself, but because he was this woman’s son.  When Mrs. Yaverland asked in that beautiful voice which was annoyingly qualified by terseness as her letters had been, “And how’s Richard?” she replied consequentially, with the air of a person describing his garden to a person who has not one.  But Mrs. Yaverland was too distracting to allow her to pursue this line with any satisfaction.  For she listened with murmurs that were surely contented; and, having drawn off her very thick, very soft leather gloves, she began to polish her nails, which were already brighter than any Ellen had ever seen, against the palms of her hands, staring meanwhile out of absent eyes at the sapphire London night about them, which Ellen was feeling far too upset to enjoy.

There was a tormenting incongruity about this woman:  those lacquered nails shown on hands that were broad and strong like a man’s; and the head that rose from the specifically dark fur was massive and vigilant and serene, like the head of a great man.  Moreover, she was not in the least what one expects an old person to be.  Old persons ought to take up the position of audience.  They ought, above all things, to