On a gray afternoon of October, Julia Cavendish sat alone in her drawing-room at Bruton Street.

She was often alone now. That curious "London" which an eclectic woman of means can gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty had begun to desert. Brunton had done nothing; but already scandal, "the scandal of Julia Cavendish's son and Hector Brunton's wife," was spreading: and although people were "very sorry for Mrs. Cavendish," still, "one had to be careful where one went," "one couldn't exactly countenance that sort of thing." So the clergymen and the politicians, the schoolmasters with their wives and the young soldiers with their fiancÉes came but sparingly, the embassy folk not at all. Only the "Ritz crowd," who thought the whole affair rather amusing; real Society, which could afford to ignore what it did not actually know; and, of course, the literary folk still visited.

Julia Cavendish treated the disaffections of her circle--scanty as yet, for the holidays scattered the scandalmongers--with contempt. In the months since her visit to Chilworth, much of her outlook on life had altered. The Victorian and the traditionalist in her were dead, the formally religious woman convert to a kindlier creed. Even literature slumbered. Literature, the sort of literature she had hitherto written, the stereotyped social romances of her earlier books, seemed so puny in comparison with the great tragedy of her son!

Seated there in the old familiar drawing-room, her embroidery-frame at her elbow, a clean fire at her feet, the light from the standard-lamp glowing on her worn features, Julia tried, as she was always trying now, to find some happy ending to the tragedy--peace for her son, reward for Aliette's courage.

For Aliette had been courageous--divinely courageous as it appeared to Julia--that afternoon at Chilworth Cove when Ronnie broke his bad news. Her own heart had failed a little; but not Aliette's. Aliette said--Julia could still remember the look in her eyes when she spoke: "You're not to worry for my sake, either of you. I shall be perfectly happy so long as you and Ronnie don't fret. If only Ronnie's career doesn't suffer----"

She, Ronnie's mother, had wanted to fight; had wanted the lovers to return to Bruton Street with her, to defy Brunton openly. After that one little failure of courage, her whole temperament cried out for combat. Fighting, she felt, was now the only course. But Aliette had counseled delay. Aliette had persuaded her to leave them at Chilworth, to go back alone to Bruton Street. And at Bruton Street she had stayed all summer.

It had been foolish to stay all summer at Bruton Street; she perceived that now. She ought to have taken her usual holiday. She ought to have listened to the advice of her "medicine-man," who, still maintaining the need for rest, was vague, unsatisfactory, disturbing.

The parlormaid, entering to make up the fire, startled her mistress.

"I wish you'd come in more quietly, Kate," said Julia irritably.

"I'm sorry, madam. Shall I bring your tea?"

"No, not yet."

Julia resumed her reverie. Was there no way by which the man whose obstinacy stood between her son and his happiness might be brought to bay? Apparently none. Sir Peter Wilberforce could only suggest that "the lady might pledge her husband's credit to such an extent that he had to take action"--and that Aliette refused to do.

Dot Fancourt, whom she had also consulted, finding him incredibly stupid, incredibly weak, was all for "letting sleeping dogs lie." He seemed to have no spirit; and she would have been grateful to him for spirit. She felt old; terribly old and weak; prescient, every now and then, of death.

This occasional prescience frightened her. The formal religion to which she had so long clung provided only a personal and a selfish consolation for death. She wanted an impersonal, an unselfish consolation; realizing that she would never be happy to leave this world unless she could leave Ronnie happy in it. Materially, of course, she had already provided for him: all her fortune would be his. But that did not suffice. Before death claimed her she must find some sword to sever his Gordian knot.

So Julia, alone in her quiet house; Julia, the literature all gone out of her, her mind busied with the actual happenings of life; while Brunton, lost in the holiday mists of the long vacation, gave never a sign; and rumor, spider-like, wove its intangible filaments to close and closer mesh.