On the first of July, Sir John and Lady Bentham (of the Bank of England) gave a rather solemn family lunch-party, at which--rarest of occasions!--the four sisters Wixton met under one roof.

Looking at her three juniors--at Clementina, ample of breast and bustle, her chin duplicated and triplicated by age, her eyes piercing under their polished crystal lenses; at May Robinson, whose scrawny widowhood was alternately devoted to good works and the cultivation of her St. John's Wood garden; at Alice Edwards, typically the Anglo-Indian woman, her complexion faded but her joviality unimpaired, her blue-eyed golden-haired Lucy in attendance, but her livery husband abandoned in Cheltenham--it came to Julia, seated beside her gray-haired host at the head of the table, that families were a curse. Never a united tribe, to-day the Wixtons seemed more at variance than ever. Julia resented May's pseudo-intimate chatter and the tactless pryings of Alice. Clementina she had always abhorred. And when Lucy tried to question her about Ronnie, her resentment reached fever-point.

For, of course--said Julia's imagination--when the family knew about Ronnie, they would gloat. Clementina, always envious of her treasure, would be in the seventh heaven at his downfall. May would weep a "Poor Julia! I always told her that she spoiled that boy." And Alice would chuckle: "It's just like Simla. Married women are always the worst."

How soon would the family know? Ronnie's secret had been well kept; but it couldn't be kept a secret much longer. Had Sir John, perhaps, heard something already?

Julia's mind wandered away from the family to Chilworth Cove. She had never seen the place, but intuition told her that it must be beautiful; and she found herself craving, suddenly, furiously, in that stuffy Cromwell Road mansion, for beauty, for the sea and the sunlight.

Perhaps, though, it was Sir John's confidences about his son which impelled the homing mother to stop her electric brougham at the Cromwell Road post-office; and write, with unsteady fingers, those six words: "Would my presence be unwelcome? Mater."

CHAPTER XIV