Yet many a solitary Stoic had sat there and written many a note to many a woman.  George, perhaps, had written to Helen Bellew at that very table with that very pen, and Mrs. Pendyce’s heart ached jealously.

“Dearest George” (she wrote),

“I have something very particular to tell you.  Do come to me at
Green’s Hotel.  Come soon, my dear.  I shall be lonely and unhappy
till I see you. 
                              “Your loving
                                   “Margery Pendyce.”

And this note, which was just what she would have sent to a lover, took that form, perhaps unconsciously, because she had never had a lover thus to write to.

She slipped the note and half a crown diffidently into the porter’s hand; refused his offer of some tea, and walked vaguely towards the Park.

It was five o’clock; the sun was brighter than ever.  People in carriages and people on foot in one leisurely, unending stream were filing in at Hyde Park Corner.  Mrs. Pendyce went, too, and timidly—­she was unused to traffic—­crossed to the further side and took a chair.  Perhaps George was in the Park and she might see him; perhaps Helen Bellew was there, and she might see her; and the thought of this made her heart beat and her eyes under their uplifted brows stare gently at each figure-old men and young men, women of the world, fresh young girls.  How charming they looked, how sweetly they were dressed!  A feeling of envy mingled with the joy she ever felt at seeing pretty things; she was quite unconscious that she herself was pretty under that hat whose brim turned down all round.  But as she sat a leaden feeling slowly closed her heart, varied by nervous flutterings, when she saw someone whom she ought to know.  And whenever, in response to a salute, she was forced to bow her head, a blush rose in her cheeks, a wan smile seemed to make confession: 

“I know I look a guy; I know it’s odd for me to be sitting here alone!”

She felt old—­older than she had ever felt before.  In the midst of this gay crowd, of all this life and sunshine, a feeling of loneliness which was almost fear—­a feeling of being utterly adrift, cut off from all the world—­came over her; and she felt like one of her own plants, plucked up from its native earth, with all its poor roots hanging bare, as though groping for the earth to cling to.  She knew now that she had lived too long in the soil that she had hated; and was too old to be transplanted.  The custom of the country—­that weighty, wingless creature born of time and of the earth—­had its limbs fast twined around her.  It had made of her its mistress, and was not going to let her go.

CHAPTER II

THE SON AND THE MOTHER

Harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle is it for a man to become a member of the Stoics’ Club, except by virtue of the hereditary principle; for unless he be nourished he cannot be elected, and since by the club’s first rule he may have no occupation whatsoever, he must be nourished by the efforts of those who have gone before.  And the longer they have gone before the more likely he is to receive no blackballs.