“Heavy and clumsy!” exclaimed Sophia.  “Well, I should never have believed it!”

“Oh, but he was!” Constance insisted.

“Now, mater,” said Cyril, “it’s a pity you don’t want that cake cutting into.  I think I could have eaten a bit of that cake.  But of course if it’s only for show ...!”

Constance sprang up, seizing a knife.

“You shouldn’t tease your mother,” Sophia told him.  “He doesn’t really want any, Constance; he’s regularly stuffed himself.”

And Cyril agreed, “No, no, mater, don’t cut it; I really couldn’t.  I was only gassing.”

But Constance could never clearly see through humour of that sort.  She cut three slices of cake, and she held the plate towards Cyril.

“I tell you I really couldn’t!” he protested.

“Come!” she said obstinately.  “I’m waiting!  How much longer must I hold this plate?”

And he had to take a slice.  So had Sophia.  When she was roused, they both of them had to yield to Constance.

With the dogs, and the splendour of the tea-table under the gas, and the distinction of Sophia and Cyril, and the conversation, which on the whole was gay and free, rising at times to jolly garrulity, the scene in her parlour ought surely to have satisfied Constance utterly.  She ought to have been quite happy, as her sciatica had raised the siege for a space.  But she was not quite happy.  The circumstances of Cyril’s arrival had disturbed her; they had in fact wounded her, though she would scarcely admit the wound.  In the morning she had received a brief letter from Cyril to say that he had not been able to come, and vaguely promising, or half-promising, to run down at a later date.  That letter had the cardinal defects of all Cyril’s relations with his mother; it was casual, and it was not candid.  It gave no hint of the nature of the obstacle which had prevented him from coming.  Cyril had always been too secretive.  She was gravely depressed by the letter, which she did not show to Sophia, because it impaired her dignity as a mother, and displayed her son in a bad light.  Then about eleven o’clock a telegram had come for Sophia.

“That’s all right,” Sophia had said, on reading it.  “He’ll be here this evening!” And she had handed over the telegram, which read—­

“Very well.  Will come same train to-day.”

And Constance learned that when Sophia had rushed out just before tea on the previous evening, it was to telegraph to Cyril.

“What did you say to him?” Constance asked.

“Oh!” said Sophia, with a careless air, “I told him I thought he ought to come.  After all, you’re more important than any business, Constance!  And I don’t like him behaving like that.  I was determined he should come!”

Sophia had tossed her proud head.