A week later Mrs. Walbridge received a letter from her publishers. It was a very kind letter, for, after all, publishers are human beings, and Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne were really sorry to hurt their poor little client.

"'Pon my word, it really makes me feel quite miserable," Mr. Lubbock had told his partner, with perfect sincerity, as they drew up a rough draft of the letter for Miss Borlays, their most confidential secretary, to type.

Mr. Payne nodded in agreement. "Poor old thing, it'll be an awful blow, and I half suspect," he added, "that she supports that rascally, good-looking husband of hers by her earnings."

"There are a lot of children, too, Payne. I've forgotten how many, but a great many," added Mr. Lubbock, smoothing his impeccable waistcoat. "Poor little woman. I wish we didn't have to do it. Of course, she has grown absolutely out of date, and this last book is disastrous, positively disastrous."

However, after some discussion, the two men decided, for the sake of old times and long friendship, to accept one more book from Mrs. Walbridge.

"We'll buy outright," Lubbock suggested. "What do you say? Give her a cheque for five hundred pounds and let her deliver the manuscript when she likes. That'll let her down a bit easier."

Mr. Payne nodded. "Five hundred pounds is a lot of money," he protested feebly. "We shan't sell as many copies either after this last mess. However, we'll do it."

When they had finished the rough draft and sent it in to the efficient Miss Borlays, the two men went out to lunch, and had a bottle of Clos Vogeot to console themselves, both for what was practically a gift of a large sum of money, and also for their sincere sympathy with that poor little superannuated scribbler. After his third glass of the excellent and mellowing wine, Mr. Lubbock even recalled to his friend how very pretty Mrs. Walbridge had been twenty years ago.

"I remember thinking I had never seen such eyes in my life," the good gentleman murmured reminiscently, "and I was only just married in those days, too."

The letter was less of a blow to Mrs. Walbridge than might have been expected, for, when faced with absolute ruin, an unexpected five hundred pounds comes very nearly like manna from heaven. Her relief when she had cashed the cheque and actually had the notes folded away in her shabby little old bag was so great that she had to struggle to keep the tears from her habitually tearless eyes. She did not go straight home from the bank, and restraining herself with a violent effort from rushing in to thank Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne—a course which she knew would be extremely distressing to them both—she did an unjustifiable but very forgivable thing. She went to Peter Robinson's and spent twenty-seven pounds nineteen and sixpence on a muff and stole for Griselda. This she had sent straight to her daughter, and, sitting at the counter in the shop, she wrote a little letter on a bit of paper out of one of her notebooks.

"My darling," she said, in her beautiful, clear writing, "here's a little present for you. I can't bear you to accept things from anyone but me. Explain to Elsie Ford, and I'm sure she'll understand your asking her to take back the beautiful furs she so kindly wanted to give you.

"When are you coming back? I don't want to cut your pleasure short, but you've been away for a long time now, and I miss you. Oliver came to see me yesterday, and he has a box for 'Roxana,' and wants you and me and a friend of his, a young man, to go with him on Thursday. Guy will be coming back any day now, and Christmas is near—and in fact I want my baby very badly.

"Your loving mother,
"Violet Walbridge."

This note she pinned on the muff, and herself folded the soft paper over it as it lay in the box. The girl who had sold it to her was very sympathetic and pleasant, and promised that it should go off that very day. When these things were accomplished, Mrs. Walbridge went on to Campden Hill, where she was lunching with Hermione.

Hilltop Road, Campden Hill, is a blind alley, beautifully quiet, with grass growing between the cobble-stones that pave it. It is a quiet, sunny, tree-sheltered place, with five or six engardened houses on either side, the smallest of which belonged to the Gaskell-Walkers. Even now, in November, a few scraggy roses and some brown-edged hydrangeas still garnished the sodden garden, and Mrs. Walbridge noticed with pleasure, as she went up the path, that the painters were evidently out. The door and windows glittered steadily in the glory of new bottle-green paint, and the windows themselves had lost the hollow-eyed look incidental to houses where the housemaids are not yet settled down to a religious respect for their blinds.

She was a little late for lunch, but Maud was the only other guest, and, as Maud was very hungry, they had not waited for her, and she found them sitting cosily over curried eggs in the pretty dining-room. She had not seen Maud for about a fortnight, and was pleased to find her looking well and rosy. Hilary was at the seaside with his Grannie Twiss, and Maud and Moreton, she was told, had been having a high old time doing the theatres.

"We are praying," the young wife added pleasantly, "for bubonic plague, or cholera, or something. Poor Moreton's only had three patients since we got back, and one of them only had neuralgia from his tooth, and Moreton had to send him across the passage to Mr. Burton to pull out a few. That," she added, reaching for the salt, "was rather bitter."

Hermione, looking radiantly pretty in her smart trousseau coat and skirt, was full of simple news about her husband and her house and their plans.

"Billy's not forgotten his promise about the Brat," she said, after a while. "He's asked Mr. Browning, his partner, you know, and he says he thinks they could make some kind of a place for him—for Guy, I mean."

"That's very kind of him. I haven't heard from Guy for over a week. I suppose he'll be coming any day now, bless him."

Then she was asked and told news of Paul, and this information was given and accepted rather coldly, for Paul was not a favourite with his brother and sisters, and their interest was only conventional.

"I believe he did rather well in something; I forget what, copper or something, last week," Mrs. Walbridge explained. "He's bought a lovely teapot with flowers all over it, and a picture—a water-colour of Venice that he says will be worth double what he paid for it in a few years."

"Grisel's having a grand time," one of the young women exclaimed towards the end of the lunch. "Elsie Ford is jolly good to her."

Her mother's delicate eyebrows stirred a little ruefully. "I don't like this new custom of taking presents from one's friends," she said.

"Nonsense, mother. Everybody does it, and Elsie's so rich it doesn't matter to her what she gives away. Do you remember how we despised her for marrying Fred Ford, Hermy?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes; he was dreadful in those days, wasn't he? There wasn't a decent 'o' in him. Real cockney."

"She's toned him down a lot, though," put in the other, "and he has a trick of picking up smart slang—really good slang, you know—that makes him quite possible. When's the kid coming home, mum?"

"A few days before Christmas. I had a letter from her yesterday. They are doing a lot of motoring, which, of course, Grisel loves. There's an old gentleman named Barclay who is very kind to her," she said.

Hermione Gaskell-Walker burst out laughing. "You'll be having the kind old gentleman for a son-in-law if you don't look out, you innocent old pet," she said, lighting her coffee machine, and blowing out the match. "Elsie told me—I met her the other day in Harrod's when she came up for that special performance at His Majesty's—that the old man was crazy about the kid, and," she added with satisfaction, "rolling—simply rolling."

Her mother looked bewildered. "Rolling——?"

"In money, dear. He's extremely rich—cattle, I think, in Argentina. She always was the best-looking of the three of us, so it's only fair she should make the best match."

Maud interrupted her indignantly. "Best match, indeed! An old man like that. How sickening of you, Hermy. I wouldn't give up Moreton for all the millionaires in the world."

Mrs. Walbridge patted her hand. "That's right, dear," she murmured, and Mrs. Gaskell-Walker looked a little ashamed of herself.

"You needn't think I'm not fond of Billy, for I am. He's absolutely perfect. I was only speaking from the worldly point of view, and it would be funny if the kid should burst out into a title, and millions, while Moreton is hunting illusive patients, and Billy worrying himself dead on the Stock Exchange."

After lunch Mrs. Walbridge was taken over the house, which was very comfortable and full of things that she supposed must be beautiful, although to her they were for the most part grotesque, if not ugly. The mattresses, and such homely appurtenances, were oldish, she found, and rather shabby, but everything downstairs was imposing, and that, Hermione thought, was the chief thing.

"By the way, mother," the young wife burst out as they came down the steep staircase, "what about that Wick man? There's not going to be any trouble with him, I hope?"

"Trouble?"

"Yes, with Grisel, I mean. Billy took a fancy to him rather, and asked him to come and see us, so he turned up the other Sunday for supper. He's very nice. We both liked him, but there's something very odd about him, don't you think?"

Maud laughed. "It's only that he says all the things that most people only think."

"I like him," Mrs. Walbridge announced firmly. "I like him very much. Did he say anything to you about Griselda, Hermy—or to Billy?"

"No, not exactly. But when he talked about the future, and he always does talk about the future (I never knew anyone who seemed to have less use for the past, or even the present), he seemed to assume that she would always be there, with him, I mean."

"He's asked her to marry him, and she's refused him."

"Really? He doesn't seem much cast down by it. I never saw a more cheery person in my life. Billy says he'll be a great success some day."

Maud went part of the way home with her mother, and asked her again for the loan. Mrs. Walbridge hesitated.

"I don't quite see how I can, dear," she said behind her muff, for they were in a bus. "My—my last book has not sold quite so well as the others."

Maud nodded. "I've seen some of the notices. Awfully sorry, dear. By the way, why don't you try to brighten up your style a little? They're awfully sweet and all that, but they are a little old-fashioned, you know."

"I—I tried to brighten up 'Lord Effingham,'" her mother faltered, and Maud laughed with kindly meant amusement that cut deep.

"'Lord Effingham' really was the limit. That baby was most shocking. We blushed for you, Moreton and I. Moreton says he thinks you don't read enough of the new stuff. Oh, I don't mean really good stuff, like Wells and May Sinclair and that lot, but the second-rate ones that sell so well—Mrs. Llovitt and Austen Goodheart, and so on. This Bell woman, too—what's her name?—Beryl J. Bell. I don't think her book is really better than yours, but every second person one meets is reading it."

Before they parted she returned again to the question of the loan.

"If you possibly can you'll let me have it, won't you? We really are rather at our wits' end. Everyone is so dreadfully healthy just now, and the rent is pretty bad—quarter-day coming. I do want some pretty things for little Violet. I should hate her to wear Hilary's left-offs."

A little smile, that was almost whimsical, touched Mrs. Walbridge's flexible lips.

"My children all wore each other's left-offs," she said softly, "and it didn't seem to hurt them. Grisel looked very sweet in your long robes. However, I'll see what I can do, darling, and I can let you have twenty-five—only don't mention it to Paul, will you?"

She changed buses at Oxford Circus, and after waiting a long time on the corner, she gave up trying to force her way into the overcrowded buses (for she hadn't the gift of crowds) and walked home. It was nearly tea-time when she reached Happy House, and after a hasty cup of tea she went up to her little attic study and sat down to work.

When Paul came home at dinner-time he was not unreasonably annoyed to find his mother still writing.

"Do come down," he called. "Dinner's on the table, and I'm hungry."

When she appeared, he looked with distaste at her ruffled hair and ink-stained finger.

"Really, mother," he exclaimed irritably, "I do think you might manage to be in time for meals. It's disgusting to a man to get home and have to wait for his food."

"I shan't be a minute, dear," she said. "I must just wash my hands and brush my hair."

"Oh, bother your hands and your hair; come along. I'm going to the play—gallery—with Bruce Collier, to the Coliseum, so I shan't have to dress, but I've very little time."

Mrs. Walbridge was a careful housekeeper, but things will go wrong sometimes in every house, and this was one of those occasions for her. She had a new cook whom she ought, she knew, to have superintended, but the call of her book had been too loud and she had forgotten all about dinner. The soup was lumpy and luke-warm, and the leg of mutton quivering and purple. Paul watched it as she cut the first slice (she always did the carving), and threw down his napkin angrily.

"Raw meat—that's really too much! I'll go to the club and get a sandwich."

Tears rose to her eyes. "Oh, Paul, I am sorry, very sorry," she cried, "and I don't wonder you're annoyed, but don't go. Let me make you a Welsh rabbit."

He shook his head and rose. "No, no. I'd rather go."

"I—I—it was my fault," she went on. "I got so interested in my book that I utterly forgot dinner."

At the door he turned and looked back at her pitilessly.

"Your book! If your books were worth while there'd be some excuse for artistic absent-mindedness, but considering the stuff you turn out, I shouldn't think such mundane details as soup and mutton need be so infinitely beneath you."

Mrs. Walbridge sat still for several minutes, staring at the closed door, a strange look on her pale face. Presently she rose, the look in her eyes intensifying, almost solidifying, to one that would immeasurably have astonished her son if he could have seen it. Lighting a lamp, she went quickly upstairs to her little writing room, and, unfastening the buttons of her right sleeve, freeing her wrist, she took up her pen and began to write. Day had begun to light her square of sky when she crept down quietly to bed the next morning.