Ralph had wondered a little as he read this, at his mother’s curious interest in the girl; and he wondered too at the report of Beatrice’s callousness.  It was her damned pride, he assured himself.

Then, one evening as he arrived home from Hackney where he had slept the previous night; he found a messenger waiting for him.  The letter had not been sent on to him, as he had not left word where he was going.

It contained a single line from his father.

“Your mother is ill.  Come at once.  She wishes for you.”

* * * * *

It was in the stormy blackness of a February midnight that he rode up through the lighted gatehouse to his home.  Above the terrace as he came up the road the tall hall-window glimmered faintly like a gigantic luminous door hung in space; and the lower window of his father’s room shone and faded as the fire leapt within.

A figure rose up suddenly from before the hall-fire as he came in, bringing with him a fierce gust of wet wind through the opened door; and when he had slipped off his dripping cloak into his servant’s hands, he saw that his father was there two yards away, very stern and white, with outstretched hands.

“My son,” said the old man, “you are too late.  She died two hours ago.”

It was a fierce shock, and for a moment he stood dazed, blinking at the light, holding his father’s warm slender hands in his own, and trying to assimilate the news.  He had been driven inwards, and his obstinacy weakened, during that long ride from town through the stormy sunset into the black, howling night; memories had reasserted themselves on the strength of his anxiety; and the past year or two slipped from him, and left him again the eldest son of the house and of his two parents.

Then as he looked into the pale bearded face before him, and the eyes which had looked into his own a few months ago with such passionate anger, he remembered all that was between them, dropped the hands and went forward to the fire.

His father followed him and stood by him there as he spread his fingers to the blaze, and told him the details, in short detached sentences.

She had been seized with pain and vomiting on the previous night at supper time; the doctor had been sent for, and had declared the illness to be an internal inflammation.  She had grown steadily worse on the following day, with periods of unconsciousness; she had asked for Ralph an hour after she had been taken ill; the pain had seemed to become fiercer as the hours went on; she had died at ten o’clock that night.

Ralph stood there and listened, his head pressed against the high mantelpiece, and his fingers stretching and closing mechanically to supple the stiffened joints.

“Mistress Atherton was with her all the while,” said his father; “she asked for her.”

Ralph shot a glance sideways, and down again.