she and her friends were interested for the emancipation and benefit of others were, in fact, only channels for letting off her superfluous goodwill, conduit-pipes, for the directing spirit bred in her.  She thought and acted in terms of the public good, regulated by what people of position said at luncheon and dinner.  And it was surely not her fault that such people must lunch and dine.  When her son had bent and kissed her, she held up the book to him and said: 

“Well, Bryan, I think this man’s book disgraceful; he simply runs his sex-idea to death.  Really, we aren’t all quite so obsessed as that.  I do think he ought to be put in his own lunatic asylum.”

Summerhay, looking down at her gloomily, answered: 

“I’ve got bad news for you, Mother.”

Lady Summerhay closed the book and searched his face with apprehension.  She knew that expression.  She knew that poise of his head, as if butting at something.  He looked like that when he came to her in gambling scrapes.  Was this another?  Bryan had always been a pickle.  His next words took her breath away.

“The people at Mildenham, Major Winton and his daughter—­you know.  Well, I’m in love with her—­I’m—­I’m her lover.”

Lady Summerhay uttered a gasp.

“But—­but—­Bryan—­”

“That fellow she married drinks.  He’s impossible.  She had to leave him a year ago, with her baby—­other reasons, too.  Look here, Mother:  This is hateful, but you’d got to know.  I can’t talk of her.  There’s no chance of a divorce.”  His voice grew higher.  “Don’t try to persuade me out of it.  It’s no good.”

Lady Summerhay, from whose comely face a frock, as it were, had slipped, clasped her hands together on the book.

Such a swift descent of “life” on one to whom it had for so long been a series of “cases” was cruel, and her son felt this without quite realizing why.  In the grip of his new emotions, he still retained enough balance to appreciate what an abominably desolate piece of news this must be to her, what a disturbance and disappointment.  And, taking her hand, he put it to his lips.

“Cheer up, Mother!  It’s all right.  She’s happy, and so am I.”

Lady Summerhay could only press her hand against his kiss, and murmur: 

“Yes; that’s not everything, Bryan.  Is there—­is there going to be a scandal?”

“I don’t know.  I hope not; but, anyway, he knows about it.”

“Society doesn’t forgive.”

Summerhay shrugged his shoulders.

“Awfully sorry for you, Mother.”

“Oh, Bryan!”

This repetition of her plaint jarred his nerves.

“Don’t run ahead of things.  You needn’t tell Edith or Flo.  You needn’t tell anybody.  We don’t know what’ll happen yet.”

But in Lady Summerhay all was too sore and blank.  This woman she had never seen, whose origin was doubtful, whose marriage must have soiled her, who was some kind of a siren, no doubt.  It really was too hard!  She believed in her son, had dreamed of public position for him, or, rather, felt he would attain it as a matter of course.  And she said feebly: