"Lord Effingham" was the book on which Mrs. Walbridge was at work, and she sat the greater part of the next three nights reading the books that Mr. Lubbock had given her, with a view to freshening up her nearly finished novel. She could not read during the day, because she had too much to do.

The plumbers had played havoc with the house in getting the new bathroom in, and the cook had to leave even more unexpectedly than cooks generally leave because her only sister was marrying and she had to go home and look after her mother. This domestic complication is familiar to many, but it didn't make it any easier for Mrs. Walbridge. Nor did things improve when Maud Twiss and her husband went for a second honeymoon to Ireland, leaving little Hilary at "Happy House."

Mrs. Walbridge loved her grandson; but he was a querulous, spoilt child, and at the best of times his presence was upsetting. Now, with no cook, with plumbers and the dreadful necessity of modernising "Lord Effingham," the little boy nearly drove her mad.

One morning, about four weeks after her interview with Mr. Lubbock, she was sitting in her little attic at the back of the house, surrounded by closely written sheets of foolscap into which she had red-inked her desperate efforts at enlivening—Lady Tryx, the heroine, had started on a new career of endless cigarettes and cocktails, and a hitherto blameless housemaid, who at first had been dismissed by an unkind countess on a charge of theft, was now burdened with an illegitimate baby; but even this failed to brighten up the dull level of decency that was so discouraging to the publishers. Violet Walbridge was a failure at illegitimacy and lawless passion, and, what was worse, she knew it.

It was cold up in the attic, for there was no fireplace, and something had gone wrong with her oil-stove. Paul had promised to see to it before going to the City that morning, but he had forgotten, so his mother had to put an old flannel dressing-gown on over her ordinary clothes and wrap her aching feet in a shawl. Her hands were covered with red ink, for her cheap stylographic pen leaked, and her pretty black hair, wavy and attractively threaded with white, was tumbled and loose.

She was utterly discouraged and unhappy about the book. "Lord Effingham," with ridiculous perseverance, insisted on pursuing his so blightingly blameless career. Her effort had put the book, such as it was, completely out of shape, and she could have cried with despair as she sat there staring through the curtainless window at the sky. Her burden was so very great, and it made it worse, although she had always prided herself on keeping her secret, that no one knew how utterly dependent the whole household of "Happy House" was on her books.

Her husband had an office and regarded himself as a business man; Paul worked in a bank, and poor Guy had been called up and was in France. (He had been with some stockbrokers in the City.) But none of them had ever contributed anything serious to the upkeep of the house.

Paul's salary was small, and his mother considered that the poor boy really needed all that he made, because he was one of those people who are very dependent on beautiful surroundings. He was a poet, too, and had written some charming verse, most of which was still unpublished, but every line of which was carefully copied in a vellum covered book someone had sent to his mother one Christmas from Florence.

Somehow that morning her mind was full of the now long absent Guy. Guy was the troublesome one. They were all tabulated in her mind—Hermione being the beauty, and Maud, "my eldest girl," while Paul was artistic.

There had been scrapes in Guy's early days (he was only twenty-one now). Certainly his tendencies had been inherited from his father—full grown cap-Â-pie tendencies they were, sprung whole, it seemed, from Ferdie's brain, as Pallas Athene sprang from her father, Zeus's. The boy was fond of billiards and devoted to horses, and there had been a time—a very tragic time—when he had shown signs of being too fond of whisky and soda. But that was past. Twice he had been home on leave from the front, and he had undoubtedly improved in many ways.

A year ago there had been an Entanglement—(Mrs. Walbridge thought of it with a capital in her mind)—with a young Frenchwoman in Soho, but that too seemed to have died down and now that the war was certainly going to end before long—this dreadful war to which we in England had so dreadfully become accustomed—he would be coming back. She sighed, for Guy's return would mean an even severer strain on her resources. He was rather a dandy and fond of clothes, but he had grown and expanded of late, and would need new things.

She looked down with something very much like hatred at the impeccable "Lord Effingham," whose persistent virtue and the wholesome tendencies of whose female friends were such drawbacks to her living children.

She struggled on and wrote a few pages, realising that the interpolations she had made were as clumsy and damaging to her story as were the red ink words that expressed them to the fair sheets of her manuscript.

Presently she heard footsteps, and a familiar little cough, coming up the stairs. It was Ferdinand coming, she knew, for a talk with her about his visit to Torquay.

"Dear me, Violet, why can't you write downstairs like a Christian," he began fretfully, turning up his coat collar and plunging his hands into his trouser pockets. "All this affectation of needing quiet and solitude for such work as yours is simply ridiculous."

She glanced up at him without moving. "I'm sorry, Ferdie," she said gently, "but indeed it isn't affectation. I really can't work when people are going in and out, and poor little Hilary is so noisy."

"Poor little Hilary! Damn nonsense! I slept very badly last night, and had just got nicely off this morning about half-past nine, when he came into my room and waked me—wanted my boot-jack for a boat, little beast!"

"Oh, I am sorry—I told him he mustn't disturb you. I'd just gone down to show Jessie how to make the mince——"

"Jessie's cooking is abominable. I don't know why you haven't got someone by this time."

When Ferdie's indignation had died away, he began again.

"What I want to know is about my rooms at Torquay. Has Mrs. Bishop written?"

"Yes. Her letter came this morning. I've got it somewhere here"—she rummaged about, but failed to find the letter. "I must have left it downstairs. She says she can't let you have the front room, because some general has got it and is going to stay all winter."

"Damnation! Just the kind of thing that always happens to me."

The clear morning light, falling undiluted from the sky, seemed to expose his mean soul almost cruelly, and his wife turned her eyes hastily away. She had known him now, as he really was, for many years and yet somehow the memory of what he had once seemed to be, what he had been to her, in her loving imagination, came back to her with painful force, and smote her to the heart.

"She says there is a very nice room at the back——"

He rose impatiently, waving his beautiful hands, on which the veins were beginning to stand out ominously.

"Oh, of course, you would think it delightful for me to have a room at the back. Nobody but you ever does appreciate beauty, views or anything of that kind. When am I to go?"

"The room will be ready on Wednesday. But, listen, Ferdie, if you think you can't bear it, why don't you write to Mrs. Bishop yourself and ask her to look out something for you? You see, she knows you, so she'd take more pains than if I wrote——"

A smile that she knew and hated crept round his mouth. "Yes, that's possible, she might," he answered. "Nice little woman, Mrs. Bishop, and although she is only a boarding-house keeper, she knows a gentleman when she sees him."

At the door he paused. "Well, I'll go and write to her. I suppose you've got some money, my dear? I paid my last cent to the income-tax man the other day. I'm sure you needn't have declared all that money to them, Violet——"

"I only told them the truth, Ferdie."

It was an old quarrel, this about the declaration to the income-tax people, and one in which he was always beaten, so, with a shrug, he went downstairs.

After a moment he called, his musical voice hoarse with the effort: "Violet—I say, Violet, have my new shirts come?"

"I—I didn't know you had ordered any, dear——"

"Oh, didn't you? No, I may have forgotten to tell you. Well, I did. Thought I might as well get two dozen while I was about it. Things are going up so."

There was a little pause and then she said, "I hope you got them at that nice place in Oxford Street?"

He had begun to whistle, but now he stopped and snarled out, "No, I didn't then. I suppose it's my business where I order my own shirts? I got them at my usual shirt-makers in Jermyn Street."

Mrs. Walbridge went quietly back into her little study and sat down.

That afternoon she went by Underground to Oxford Street and from there walked in a cold grey rain to Queen Anne Street, where her daughter, Mrs. Twiss, lived. Doctor Twiss lived in one-half of a roomy old house in Queen Anne Street. His waiting-room and his consulting-room were at the left of the door, those on the right belonging to a fashionable dentist—but the rest of his rooms were two flights upstairs, the dentist, who was a rich man, occupying the whole of the first floor.

Mrs. Walbridge paused before she rang at the upstairs door, for she was very tired, and her usually placid thoughts seemed broken and confused. Maud was her eldest daughter and in some ways the most companionable, but she was a selfish woman and devotedly fond of her husband and little boy, so that she had scant room for anyone else in her life.

"If only Maud would be sympathetic," Mrs. Walbridge thought, as she finally rang.

"Mrs. Twiss is in the bedroom," the maid told her, "she ain't very well to-day. I think the sea voyage upset 'er."

Mrs. Walbridge nodded to her and went down the narrow rose-walled passage and knocked.

Mrs. Twiss was lying down on a divan at the foot of her bed, reading.

"Oh, Mum," she cried, without getting up, "how sweet of you to come so soon! How are you, all right? We've had the most glorious time—Moreton's put on four pounds and never looked better in his life."

Mrs. Walbridge sat down and looked round at the pleasant, familiar room. There were plenty of flowers about and piles of new books, and all the illustrated weeklies, and on a little Moorish table close to the divan stood a gilt basket full of chocolates.

"You seem to be having a comfortable afternoon, my dear."

Maud laughed.

"I am. I expect we shall have a pretty bad time when we begin to count up—travelling is fearfully expensive now—Moreton had to send home for an extra fifty pounds. So we're taking it easy to-day. He's gone to the hospital, and we're dining at the Carlton and going to see 'Chu Chin Chow' to-night."

There was a little pause. Mrs. Walbridge was very unaccustomed to telling bad news; being told it was more in her line. But she was in such distress that she had thought she must tell Maud about Lubbock and Payne. It would have done her good just to talk it over. But now, when she tried, she found she could not.

"Caroline had taken Hilary to the Zoo when your telephone message came," she began, "or I would have brought him along. He's been very good, Maud, and his appetite is splendid. I got him a bottle of cod liver oil and malt, because I thought his little ribs stuck out a bit when I bathed him——"

"Oh, the pet! I'm longing to see him! We've brought him all sorts of presents. Oh, Mum, I was going to get you a sweet little bracelet of old Irish paste—you know—a thing in four little chains. But at the last minute Moreton found we had spent so much that I had to give him my last fiver. So you'll take the will for the deed, won't you?"

"Of course, darling, how sweet of you to think of it. I'm glad Moreton is so much better," Mrs. Walbridge began after a moment, "I hope he'll have lots of patients this winter."

Maud's fair face clouded. She was a big, handsome woman, though less shapely in her features than her sisters, and already showed signs of being very fat in a few years' time, although she was only twenty-eight.

"I hope so, too," she grumbled. "Things are really awfully serious. I believe all the tradespeople put their prices up when they hear this address."

"I suppose it wouldn't—I suppose it wouldn't do for you to go and live in a cheaper house?" Mrs. Walbridge faltered.

Maud sat straight up in her horror and dropped a half-bitten chocolate on the floor.

"My goodness, mother, what a perfectly poisonous idea! Why, it would ruin Moreton after having begun here. Of course we can't."

She came and sat down on a stool near her mother and leaned her head on her mother's knees.

"I'm longing to see Hilary," she repeated, playing with a bit of her silk dressing-gown nervously. "And I have something to tell him, Mum—he'll—he'll be having a little sister in the spring."

Poor Mrs. Walbridge sat perfectly still for a moment, her hand on her daughter's silky brown hair. Another baby, another duty, another worry, and she would be the only one who would really suffer, although Maud and her gay, well-meaning young husband would talk a great deal about their responsibilities.

"Mum," Maud said coaxingly. "Darling, you've got a new book coming out, haven't you? Don't go and buy Paul any more of those nasty Japanese things; those monkeys make me sick anyhow. Be a lamb, and let me have a hundred pounds to see me through, will you?"

There was nothing particularly imploring in her voice, for she was quite used to asking favours of her mother, and repeated favours always turn into rights sooner or later. When her mother didn't answer, she screwed round on her stool and looked up.

"Why, Mum," she cried, "what's the matter? Why do you look like that?"

Mrs. Walbridge kissed her. "Nothing, dear, I'm tired. I've been working very hard."

She rose and her big daughter scrambled to her feet, laughing merrily.

"Oh, you old pet! Was it working hard at it's psychological masterpiece? Anybody'd think you were what's-his-name, who wrote 'Elektra'!" She laughed again, pleasant, full-throated, musical laughter, that yet cut her hearer to her sore heart.

"Don't—don't laugh, dear," she said gently. "I know my bodes are awful rubbish, but——"

Mrs. Twiss stared and took another chocolate.

"Oh, darling," she murmured. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. We all love your books. Well, you'll let me have the hundred, won't you, pet? We're going to name her Violet."

The little sad face under the old-fashioned, pheasant-winged hat softened a little. "I'll do my best, dear," she said. "Now I must go. Give my love to Moreton."