“Mother!” Richard cried irascibly, and levelled the torch on her like a revolver.

Its brightness showed the dewy roundness, towsled with perplexity, of a doe-eyed girl of Ellen’s age.

“Ach!” said Richard, shouting with rage.  “Who are you?  Who are you?”

It struck Ellen that his refusal of any recognition of the girl’s sweetness was unnatural; that it would have been more sane and wholesome, though it would have pricked her jealousy, if he had shown some flush of pleasure at this gentle, bucolic, nut-brown beauty.

“Please, sir,” gabbled the girl with her wet, foolish, pretty lips, “I’m Annie Brickett, and your cook’s my auntie, and I come over to say my married sister’s had a little baby, and it’s before her time, so would auntie give us the clothes she was making?”

The door opened, and aproned figures looked out of the kitchen brightness at them.

“Where is your mistress?” Richard asked them, cutting into the girl’s sweet, silly speech.  “Has she come back?”

The servants all started making twittering, consequential noises.  “No, sir, she isn’t.”  “We didn’t know, any of us, you was out till the lady and gentleman come.”

“What lady and gentleman?”

The two younger women shrunk back and left the cook to answer.  “Mr. Roger Peacey, sir, and the lady.”  From the hindmost girl there came a giggle.

That was why they had not heard the knocking at the door.  They had all been sitting laughing at his mother’s other son and going over the family history.  Ellen shrank back from the light.  Marion’s misfortunes made things very ill to deal with; they seemed to bring out the worst in everybody.  And how the whole affair was hurting Richard!  He turned on his heel and walked back to the trellis arch and went through it without waiting for her.  By the time she had followed him round the corner of the house he was opening the French window into the dining-room.  He found it quite easy to open; again she thought with rage and contempt of the way that Marion had fumbled with the handle.  She had to run along the path lest in his forgetfulness he shut her out into the night.

She found him halted just within the room, pulling off his gauntlets and forcing a white smile towards Roger, who was standing swaying on the hearthrug, his cheeks dribbled with tears.  Poppy stood beside him, staring sullenly at a blank wall, her mouth a little open with distaste for him.

“So you’re giving us another visit,” said Richard, in that hollow conscientious tone of kindness he had used to them in the afternoon.

Roger opened his mouth but could not speak; then flapped his hands to make it plain this was an occasion of importance, and cried bleatingly:  “I’ve come to say that I forgive you all.”

“Forgive us!” exclaimed Richard, swept away to the bleak extremity of rage.  Then checked himself.  “Oh, for not coming to your meeting.  We hoped you would.  Ellen was tired.”