by a betrayal.  For when he had lifted his lips from her cheek and had turned to greet Roger with courtesy that was at once kind and insincere, he had left one hand resting on her shoulder as it had been when they embraced, and his thumb stretched out to press on the pulse that beat at the base of her throat.  If she had been completely loyal she would have moved; but she had stood quite still, letting him mark how she was not calm and rejoicing at all, but shaken as by a storm with her disgust at this loathsome presence.  His hand had relaxed and he had passed it caressingly up her neck.  She had let herself sigh deeply; she might as well have said, “I am so glad you understand I hate him.”  That was the first of a thousand such betrayals.  The words said between souls are not heard by the eavesdropping ear, but the soul also can eavesdrop, and tells in its time.  That morning there must have come a moment to the poor pale boy, as he worked at his silly present in the little shed, when it was plain to him that the mother and the brother whom he had thought so kind were vulpine with love of each other, vulpine with hate of him.

There was no disputing his discovery, since it was true.  The only thing to do was to try to arrange some way of life for him in which he would have a chance to become an independent person who could form new and unspoiled relationships.  It was, of course, out of the question to send him back to the shop, but the problem of disposing of him was one that raised innumerable difficulties which Marion was the less able to face because her bad dreams had begun again.  He had so little schooling that it was impossible to send him in for any profession.  He, himself, who was touchingly grateful because they were not sending him back to the shop, chose to be trained as a veterinary surgeon, and he was apprenticed to old Mr. Taylor at Canewdon.  But it turned out that though he had a passionate love for animals he had no power over them.  After he had been chased round a field three times and severely bitten by a stallion with whom he had sat up for two nights, Mr. Taylor pronounced that it was hopeless and sent him home.  They tried him as a chemist’s assistant next, and he did well for ten months, until there was that awful trouble about the prescription.  There had been nothing to do after that save to put him to work as a clerk and give him an allowance that with his wages would enable him to live in comfort and try to seem glad when he came home for his holidays.

For he was still not quite sure.  His suspicion that his mother did not love him was so strong that, half because his sweetness of nature made him not want to bother her if his presence really gave her pain, and half because he could not bear to put the matter to a test, he would not take a situation anywhere near Roothing.  But he liked to come home for his fortnight’s holidays at Christmas, and sit by the hearth and look at his wonderful mother and