“I can’t say.  I only looked out for a moment.  The clouds are going and the moon’s rising.  But there’s a queer feeling in the air to-night.  It’s not like the winter or spring or summer or autumn.  It’s as if we had come into some fifth season of the year.”  She fell silent and sat tapping the floor with her foot; and asked more loudly but in the same tone:  “What am I to do, Ellen, to keep my sons from quarrelling over me?”

Ellen was sure she was being mocked; grown-up people never asked one’s advice.  She muttered sullenly:  “I don’t know”; but as she spoke she heard from Marion’s dark shape a sound of discovery such as a searcher might make when his groping fingers closed on the lost pearl.  Its intensity convinced, and she leaned forward, crying in full friendship:  “You’ve thought of something to settle them?”

But Marion answered, with that indifference grown nearly to a sneer:  “Oh, no....  Oh, no....”

Ellen leaned back, hating these adults that like to keep their secrets from the young.

CHAPTER X

Ellen was still on her knees fiddling with the lock of the French window in an effort to discover why Marion had found it so difficult to open and shut, when she saw through the lacquer of reflection which the lit room painted on the uncurtained glass that a dark mass had come to a halt just outside.  It moved, and she perceived that it was a skirt.  She stood up to face the intruder and looked through the glass into Marion’s eyes.  For a moment she stared back in undisguised anger.  Of course, if the woman had had any sense she would never have formed this daft idea of going for a dander on the marshes at this hour of the night, whether her nerves were troubling her or not; but she never ought to have pretended to be so set on it, and let a body feel sure of having the evening alone with Richard as soon as he had finished with those beastly papers, if she was going to turn back in five minutes.  Then she remembered that this was Richard’s mother, and that for some reason he set great store by her; and she tried to smile, and laid her fingers on the doorknob to open it.  But Marion shook her head and put out a prohibitory hand with so urgent a gesture that the unlit lantern which hung by a strap from her wrist bumped against the glass.

Yet she remained for some seconds longer with her face pressed close to the window.  She was peering into the room with an expression of wanting to fix its contents and its appearance in her memory, which was odd in the owner of the house.  Ellen moved aside in order not to impede her vision, and stood disliking her for her pervasive inexplicability and for her extreme plainness.  She had been very ugly all that evening since she came down to dinner, and now the shining glass in front of her face was acting in its uncomeliness like a magnifying lens.  Her hair had suddenly become greasy during the last few