Mrs. Leith senior paid him occasional visits, which Dion found just the least bit trying.  Since Omar had been killed, Dion had felt more solicitous about his mother, who had definitely refused ever to have another dog.  If he had been allowed to give her a dog he would have felt more easy about her, despite Beatrice’s quiet statement of why Omar had meant so much.  As he might not do that, he begged his mother to come very often to Little Market Street and to become intimate with Robin.  But when he saw her with Robin he was generally embarrassed, although she was obviously enchanted with that gentleman, for whose benefit she was amazingly prodigal of nods and becks and wreathed smiles.  It was a pity, he thought, that his mother was at moments so apparently elaborate.  He felt her elaboration the more when it was contrasted with the transparent simplicity of Rosamund.  Even Robin, he fancied, was at moments rather astonished by it, and perhaps pushed on towards a criticism at present beyond the range of his powers.  But Mrs. Leith’s complete self-possession, even when immersed in the intricacies of a baby-language totally unintelligible to her son, made it impossible to give her a hint to be a little less—­well, like herself when at No. 5.  So he resigned himself to a faint discomfort which he felt sure was shared by Rosamund, although neither of them ever spoke of it.  But they never discussed his mother, and always assumed that she was ideal both as mother-in-law and grandmother.  She was Robin’s godmother and had given him delightful presents.  Bruce Evelin and Daventry were his godfathers.

Bruce Evelin now lived alone in the large house in Great Cumberland Place.  He made no complaint of his solitude, which indeed he might be said to have helped to bring about by his effective, though speechless, advocacy of Daventry’s desire.  But it was obvious to affectionate eyes that he sometimes felt rather homeless, and that he was happy to be in the little Westminster home where such a tranquil domesticity reigned.  Dion sometimes felt as if Bruce Evelin were watching over that home in a wise old man’s way, rather as Rosamund watched over Robin, with a deep and still concentration.  Bruce Evelin had, he confessed, “a great feeling” for Robin, whom he treated with quiet common sense as a responsible entity, bearing, with a matchless wisdom, that entity’s occasional lapses from decorum.  Once, for instance, Robin chose Bruce Evelin’s arms unexpectedly as a suitable place to be sick in, without drawing down upon himself any greater condemnation than a quiet, “How lucky he selected a godfather as his receptacle!”