Tim had developed amazingly.  He seemed instinctively to recognize her moods, adapting himself accordingly, and in his thought and care for her there was a half-playful, half-tender element of possessiveness that sometimes brought a smile to her lips—­and sometimes a sigh, as the inevitable comparison asserted itself between Tim’s gentle ruling and the brusque, forceful mastery that had been Garth’s.  But, on the whole, the visit to the Durwards was productive of more smiles than sighs, and Sara found Tim’s young, chivalrous devotion very soothing to the wound her pride had suffered at Garth’s hands.

She overflowed in gratitude to Elisabeth.

“You’re giving me a perfectly lovely time,” she told her.  “And Tim is such a good playfellow!”

Elisabeth’s face seemed suddenly to glow with that inner radiance which praise of her beloved Tim alone was able to inspire.

“Only that, Sara?” she said very quietly.  Yet somehow Sara knew that she meant to have an answer to her question.

“Why—­why——­” she stammered a little.  “Isn’t that enough?”—­trying to speak lightly.

Elisabeth shook her head.

“Tim wants more than a playfellow.  Can’t you give him what he wants, Sara?”

Sara was silent a moment.

“I didn’t know he had told you,” she said, at last, rather lamely.

“Nor has he.  Tim is loyal to the core.  But a mother doesn’t need telling these things.”  Elisabeth’s beautiful voice deepened.  “Tim is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh—­and he’s soul of my soul as well.  Do you think, then, that I shouldn’t know when he is hurt?”

Sara was strangely moved.  There was something impressive in the restrained passion of Elisabeth’s speech, a certain primitive grandeur in her envisagement of the relationship of mother and son.

“I expect,” pursued Elisabeth calmly, “that you think I’m going too far—­farther than I have any right to.  But it’s any mother’s right to fight for her son’s happiness, and I’m fighting for Tim’s.  Why won’t you marry him, Sara?” The question flashed out suddenly.

“Because—­why—­oh, because I’m not in love with him.”

A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth’s face.

“I wish,” she observed, “that we lived in the good old days when you could have been carried off by sheer force and compelled to marry him.”

Sara laughed outright.

“I really believe you mean it!” she said with some amusement.

Elisabeth nodded.

“I do.  I shouldn’t have hesitated.”

“And what about me?  You wouldn’t have considered my feelings at all in the matter, I suppose?” Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been in any way feasible.