"Your mother is already in the dining-room, Mr. Ronald," said the uniformed parlormaid, who had valeted him while he was still at Winchester.

"Thank you, Kate." Ronnie handed the woman his hat and strode in.

Julia stood by the be-ferned fireplace, inspecting a newly-acquired print, only that afternoon hung. Kissing him, she called his attention to the treasure.

"It's 'The Match-Seller'--a proof before letters. Only two more to find, and my collection of 'The Cries of London' will be complete."

They talked prints, engravings and china throughout dinner. Julia, acting on Sir Heron Baynet's advice, ate sparingly, and drank nothing stronger than Evian water; but for her son she had ordered a miniature feast--all the particular foods of his particular boyhood--and the last bottle of his father's Chambertin.

Usually, when she prepared such a feast, Ronnie would compliment her on her memory, her forethought; but to-night he seemed scarcely aware of what he ate. She had to coax him: "Turbot, dear, your favorite fish," or, "I remembered the sauce BÉarnaise, you see."

Coaxed, he complimented her; but without enthusiasm--so that, hurt, she said to herself: "He's giving me only half his mind. He's thinking of that woman. I'm certain he'd rather be dining her at Claridge's"--(Julia's heroes often "dined" their discreetly illicit passions at the more expensive caravanserais)--"than sitting here with his old mother."

Meanwhile he said to himself, "She's taken so much trouble over this little dinner. I ought to be more grateful. Dash it, I am grateful! Good Lord, it's nearly nine o'clock! The last post will be in soon. Perhaps there'll be a letter. Perhaps Aliette will telephone to-night. I must get away by ten."

Resultantly, by the time Kate brought coffee and cigarettes, the moment for confidences was as unpropitious as any Julia Cavendish could possibly have chosen.

"Ronnie," she, began, as soon as they were alone, "I hope you won't be angry at what I'm going to say."

The opening, so entirely foreign to her usual abruptness, made Ronnie--on the instant--suspicious. The Wixton imagination in him said: "Danger! She's found out. She knows something about Aliette. She may know about Aliette's having been to your rooms." And immediately the magisterial Cavendish in him decided: "I shall refuse to be drawn. It's not her business. Even if she does know, she ought to have waited till I thought fit to broach the subject."

Nevertheless, the ghost of the schoolboy who had liked sauce BÉarnaise and been vaguely frightened of his mother was in a funk. The ghost of the schoolboy, looking at his mother's determined chin, did not see the unhappiness behind his mother's blue eyes.

After a second's hesitation, the magisterial Cavendish laughed.

"It depends on what you are going to say, mater."

"It isn't much." Julia braced herself to the unpleasant task. "Perhaps it isn't anything at all. But I feel that you're keeping something from me. Something rather--important. Something that's making you unhappy. Can't you confide in me? I might be able to help. We've never had any secrets from each other, you and I."

Kate, coming in to clear the table, was shooed away with a calm "We haven't quite finished our coffee. I'll ring when I want you."

"We oughtn't to have secrets from one another," went on Julia diffidently.

Her son, stiff-lipped, uncompromising, made no answer; and she continued, a little afraid:

"You told me about Lucy. Can't you tell me about this--love affair?"

The tone irritated him.

"My dear mater, what love affair?"

"Flirtation, then?" Fleetingly, her suspicions lulled by his presence, she thought how ridiculous it was of him to be so stubborn. Dot Fancourt, Paul Flower, and many other of the literary among her acquaintances rather liked talking about their flirtations. Then his very stubbornness perturbed her.

"Ronnie," she said, "be open with me. You are in love?"

"What if I am?" He had never lied to her, and had no intention of doing so now. Apparently she did not know about Aliette's having been to Jermyn Street; otherwise--reticence with him not being one of her characteristics--she would have said so. Obviously, though, she suspected quite enough!

"What if I am?" he repeated.

"You mean--it's not my business?" she faltered.

"Yes. I do mean that. I don't want to be unkind, or unfair. But you must see that I can't discuss--that sort of thing with you."

"Why not?" Thoroughly alarmed now, she tried to hide alarm with a smile. "Lots of people do confide in me. I--you know I wouldn't betray your confidence."

"Is that quite the point?"

Julia Cavendish deigned to plead: "I've been so worried, Ronnie. I feel, somehow, that you're in trouble. I feel I understand why. And I only want you to let me help you."

His mood softened. "Poor old mater," he thought. But her next words dispelled softness; irritated him again.

"You see," she said, "you're still so young. Only a boy really. You don't know the world as I know it. You mustn't reject my advice."

"I'm thirty-six," he parried.

"And I'm over sixty."

"You don't look it, mater."

She felt herself being edged away from her topic. She saw a vision of Aliette Brunton--standing palpably between herself and her son. Vague jealousy clouded her love, her kindness.

"You don't deny the correctness of my statement," she shot at him. "You admit that you are in love?"

"Suppose I admit that much----" His lean face flushed.

"Then the least you can do is to tell me with whom. You say you don't want to be unkind or unfair. Is it fair, or kind, to let me"--Julia hesitated over the word--"suspect things?"

He said bluntly, "There is nothing to suspect."

She said with equal bluntness, "Then why am I not to be told?"

Ronnie's temper rose. He, too, saw a vision of Aliette, palpably demanding his protection.

"Because there's nothing to tell."

"Ronnie, that's not the truth." The words burst from her. "You've never lied to me before. Why can't you tell me the truth now? Ever since Sunday, I've known----"

"Known what?"

Her heart dropped a beat at his obvious anger. It was as though she already knew the worst. Love and jealousy, strangely commingling in her ego, ousted--for one flash of a second--all other emotions. So that it might have been an adoring wife rather than a religious mother who answered.

"That you and Mrs. Brunton were in love with each other."

"So she knew all the time," thought Ronnie. His first feeling was relief. At least the mater knew nothing of what had happened since Sunday. Only her uncanny intuition had led her to the truth. Then fear--no longer fear for himself, but fear for Aliette--keyed his legal brain to defense.

"You have no right to make that statement. Where's your proof, your evidence?"

She looked him full in the face; noted the blood at his temples, the working nostrils, the angry sparks in his light blue eyes. The effort to stand up against his obstinacy wrenched her in pieces. Her knees, her very stomach trembled. The known room, the beloved things, seemed suddenly worthless. She felt self-reproachfully that she had loved things too much, her son too little. She could have cried, then and there--she who had never let the tears to her eyes.

"Ronnie," she pleaded, "why must you be so hard, so hostile? Mothers don't need 'evidence.' At least, I don't. Not where you are concerned. You said just now that this--this affair was none of my business. Isn't it a mother's business to protect her child, to save him? Would it have been fair for me not to have spoken? It isn't as if you couldn't trust me----"

She broke off; and fear faded from the mind of her son. He was no longer even angry. Once again he saw in Julia the "lonely old woman," dependent solely on his affection; saw her--very radiant down the years--fetching him, still a child, from his "Dame's School" in Welbeck Street; saw her visiting him at Winchester, at the Varsity. Always, she had been the confidante, the rather stern confidante, of his troubles. Surely, surely when she knew the fineness of Aliette, when she knew how Aliette had refused to let him hurt her, she would help him, help both of them?

"Of course I trust you. It isn't that. And if--if we'd decided anything definitely, I'd tell you about it. But, as things are, I can't tell you anything. You see that, don't you?"

"No. I don't," said Julia sternly--the mother, the religious woman and the traditionalist in her alike roused to bay by the sudden frankness. "It seems to me that, having admitted so much, you owe me the rest."

"But it wouldn't be fair----"

"I can't see why. Unless--unless there's something you--you're both afraid of my knowing."

"Mater!" All the chivalry in him, revolting at the slur on Aliette, urged full confession. "You've spoken with her. You can't possibly imagine that she's the sort of woman who----"

Indignation dumbed him; and in his moment of dumbness the mother realized her mistake, realized him in that hair-trigger state of emotion when the slightest touch will loose the explosion; realized that he and Aliette were on the verge of disaster, that Aliette was the wife of a king's counselor, that she, Julia, must cut out her tongue rather than say the word which would decide her son to wreck his career. But realization came too late.

"You don't imagine that she--that we would do anything underhand," burst out the boy in Ronnie.

"Of course not, dear." Almost Julia had it in her to hate the woman's virtue. To love in secret was certainly a sin before God; but to commit open adultery was a sin before both God and what remained of English Society.

"And, mater," he bent forward boyishly, across the table, "I love her; we love each other."

"Another man's wife?"

"Only in name." His teeth clenched. "Only in law."

She wanted to say, "You believe that?"; but instinct restrained her. She grew frightened at the passion in Ronnie's eyes. He talked on--vehemently. "I can't live without her. I won't. Why should I? What's a divorce nowadays? Who cares? Except a few snuffy old priests. And half of them don't know their own minds."

"Ronnie!" She conjured up every atom of force in her to wrestle with his vehemence. "What's happened to you? divorce means scandal. It means sin. But I won't talk about the religious part. One either believes or one doesn't. I only beg of you, I implore you, to think of your career----"

"Who cares about my career----"

"I do."

"My career won't suffer----"

"It will. You'll be disbarred. Brunton's a power. You'll have him for enemy instead of for friend. You'll make a thousand enemies. The snuffy old priests, as you call them, aren't the only ones who care about divorce. Half the houses I visit will be closed to you."

"For six months."

"No. For good. And you'll never be able to go into politics."

"Politics!" scornfully.

"People will cut you."

"Let them." Opposition, clarifying his mind, keyed him to fight. "Let them! What do I care? We sha'n't have done anything wrong."

"It's always wrong to set ourselves up against the world."

"That's sheer cowardice. And it isn't true, either. What about Jesus Christ?"

"That's sheer blasphemy."

One of the dinner-table candles guttered and went out. To Julia, it seemed like an omen. She saw her son's career gutter out in that curling smoke; saw him entrapped by the powers of darkness, prey to the personal devil. Now no one except God, her own particular secular god, could help. She prayed voicelessly to that particular secular god for words to save the entrapped soul of her boy.

"Ronnie! You've always been so good, the best of sons. You've never given me a moment's anxiety--never--since the day you were born. Until now! And you've always trusted me. Won't you trust me in this? Won't you believe me when I tell you that the thing you contemplate is a sin?"

Quietly, he answered, "If God is love, how can love be a sin?"

The phrase shot a tiny sliver of doubt through the armor of Julia Cavendish's belief, pricking her unwisdom to retort:

"Love! Love isn't passion. Love is service. If you loved her, really and truly loved her, you'd save this woman from herself. And if she loved you, really and truly loved you, she'd be the last person in the world----"

He wanted to argue: "You don't understand. You're too prejudiced to understand." Instead, comprehending abruptly how far his confidences had outrun actuality, he blustered:

"We won't discuss her motives, please. Or mine. Neither of us is a child--as you seem to think. We're quite capable of deciding things for ourselves. When we do----"

"She hasn't consented then?" Julia grasped at the life-buoy.

"No."

Another doubt entered like a dart into the mother's mind. Suppose Sir Heron's warnings came true? Then soon there might be nobody to care for Ronnie. Suppose, suppose this woman really did care--as she, Julia, cared? A woman in Mrs. Brunton's position would hardly risk divorce for a bÉguin.

Nervously she played with her favorite ring--a diamond-set miniature of her son in earliest boyhood. Nervously she said: "You won't do things in a hurry. Promise me that."

"I can't promise anything," He blustered again, feeling that she was trying to fetter his independence. "I'd rather not discuss the subject any more."

The bluster, so foreign to him, irritated her dignity.

"Very well. It shall be as you wish. We'll say no more about this matter. It's been very painful to me, and I can only hope it won't be still more painful--to both of us--before it's over."

His irritated dignity answered hers. "Why to both of us? It's entirely my affair."

"Not entirely. I've tried to keep myself out of this question; but, as your mother, I have certain claims. And you know, or at least you ought to know, my feelings on the subject of divorce. I ask you to believe that I'm trying to sympathize with you, to see your point of view. But I can't. To me, any union, however legalized, between you and Hector Brunton's wife, means deadly sin. You call this passion of yours love. I don't. I call it by an uglier name." His eyes kindled. "That angers you. I'm sorry. But I'm speaking the truth, as I see it. If you and she decide to commit this deadly sin, don't come to me for forgiveness."

Julia rose, weary with words, to her feet. "Shall we go upstairs to the drawing-room? Kate will be waiting to clear the table."

"Not for a moment." Ronnie, too, rose. "What do you mean, exactly, when you say, 'Don't come to me for forgiveness'?"

"What do I mean?" Sheer physical fatigue unnerved Julia's mind. Jealousy, the mad mother jealousy for the mate which her brain had been holding in leash all evening, broke its bonds; so that she saw her only son, the baby she had cherished from his cradle, lost to her in another woman's arms. White arms--young and smooth and sinful! "What do I mean? Only this--that you must choose between your mother and your--mistress."

Even as that last word escaped the barrier of her teeth, Julia Cavendish knew the mistake irretrievable. Her dignity flickered out like a match in a storm. She wanted to throw herself on his mercy, to beg his pardon with bended knees. But the word, the unpardonable insult of a word, was out. Slowly, she saw his mind grip its full significance. Then his face paled to harsh granite; and his eyes, for once in their lives, grew sterner than her own.

"I have chosen," said Ronald Cavendish.

CHAPTER XI