Great events took place during this summer of 1915. Italy joined the Allies; and the Hun advance was stopped. Once again wise men said that the war was coming to an end; and wiser than they contended stubbornly that it wasn’t. Cicely remained at the Manor with Lady Selina. After the first fortnight, they went for a month to Danecourt Abbey, where they listened, not without impatience on Cicely’s part, to long jeremiads from Lord Saltaire, who predicted the end of the world, and quoted the Book of Revelation to prove that the All-Highest was the Beast. Expenses at the Abbey had indeed been reduced to the minimum. The family butler, accustomed to three tall footmen, whose places were filled by one boy, gave notice. He had been with Lord Saltaire for many years.

“Why are you leaving me?” asked his master, fretfully.

“Because, my lord, if you will be good enough to pardon the expression, I can’t stick it any longer.”

Lord Saltaire, as he confessed afterwards, was stupefied into silence. The butler departed.

Cicely told herself that she, too, couldn’t stay on beyond the appointed month. She beheld her uncle’s domains with uneasy eyes, sharpened to critical detachment after six months at Wilverley. The same obsolete system of estate management that howled for reform at Upworthy was even more vocal at Danecourt. But Lady Selina, like her brother, remained blind and deaf to signs and sounds that ate ravagingly into Cicely’s sensibilities. Wages all over the vast property remained low, although prices had risen. Old men in the gardens and stables followed the butler into a more generous world, because they were unable to “stick it.” Farmers were waxing fat and prosperous, whilst their labourers were sweated. Spurred to speech, Cicely said one day to her mother:

“Things are going to pieces here, Mother.”

Lady Selina replied solemnly, with mournful resignation: “Our class is hit harder than any other.”

“But Uncle could sell some of his land.”

“Sell his land? What are you talking about? Sell the land that has been in our possession four hundred years——!”

Cicely murmured almost inaudibly:

“I think land poverty is awful.”

“We are all of the same mind about that, child.”

They duly returned to the Manor, where a pathetic surprise brought tears to Cicely’s eyes. Hitherto she had occupied a small bedroom, a virginal bower of blue-and-white. Across the corridor were Brian’s rooms, a bedroom and a sitting-room. During their absence Lady Selina had re-papered and re-decorated these two rooms charmingly:

“They are yours, my dear,” she said quietly.

It happened to be the first indication of the tremendous change in Cicely’s prospects. Till now not a word had been said by Lady Selina in remotest allusion to that change. But, at times, the girl had been conscious of intent eyes gazing interrogatively into hers, as if to say: “What will she do with it?” And, very rarely, when the pair were sitting together, Lady Selina would take Cicely’s hand, and hold it tenderly and yet tenaciously, as if it were a precious possession, more—an instrument to be used for a definite purpose.

Lady Selina sat down. With an authoritative gesture she invited Cicely to occupy Brian’s chair, now freshly covered with chintz. Cicely felt curiously awed.

“One day,” said Lady Selina, “Upworthy will be yours.”

A vast burden seemed to the girl to be descending upon her. She looked at Lady Selina with such an expression as might be glimpsed in the eyes of an intelligent young horse about to be harnessed to a cart loaded high with mother-earth. Tons of Upworthy clay!

“Property, my dear, is a very sacred trust.”

Suddenly, she frowned, for she remembered John Exton’s words. The abominable scene reproduced itself vividly. She could see John’s eager, resentful face and hear his provocative words. As instantly she beheld the debonair Brian derisively amused by the Anarchist. Her voice was less soft as she added:

“Opinions, of course, may vary in regard to the administration of a trust.”

“Yes.”

Lady Selina continued more easily, as the vision of John Exton faded out of her mind:

“With abundant private means, with such an income as dear Arthur enjoys, for instance, an income happily independent of land, estate management becomes easy—easy.”

Cicely was constrained to dispute this.

“I don’t think, Mother, that Arthur finds it so.”

“Well, well, you may know more about that than I do. Here, at any rate, ways have to be adjusted to means. And the ways seem to increase as the means diminish.”

She ended with a sigh. Cicely, sensible that her mother was expecting from her some sort of positive declaration, sensible also that if she spoke her mind freely she would wound and amaze a devoted mother, hesitated. Had her mother purposely used Arthur’s name? Did she contemplate estate management made easy by a rich son-in-law? She was well aware that Tiddy had predicted aright. Brian’s death had cut short a second proposal. Absence, she felt assured, had not cooled Arthur’s feelings for her. Twice he had written. And every sentence in his letters seemed to end with a note of interrogation: “Will you?” When they met, in a day or two, he would exact the answer categorical. Did a fond mother take for granted what that answer would be?

“You love the old ways, Mother?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

Cicely felt herself sinking into Upworthy clay, deeper and deeper.

“Can we go on walking in them?”

“I shall walk in them to the end.”

The finality of her tone petrified Cicely into silence. All power of resistance seemed to ooze from her, leaving her invertebrate. The tentacles of tradition and heredity enwrapped her. What was the use of struggling? She stole a glance at her mother’s face, now an impenetrable mask. Obviously, the mere suggestion that the old ways were overgrown by the new vegetation and becoming impassable had irritated Lord Saltaire’s sister. It had never occurred to Cicely before that her mother was not a Chandos. Now, furtively examining Lady Selina’s features, the likeness to Lord Saltaire came out strikingly. Before the war her uncle had presented the same gracious personality to a world that acclaimed him as a distinguished ornament. To-day—and even Lord Saltaire recognised this—manners were at a discount. Tiddy had said pertly: “Lords have slumped.” More, Cicely had to confess to herself that her mother and uncle seemed to have lost something almost indefinable, that assured sense of position and rank. Out of heads still held high smouldered anxious eyes, mutely asking questions which the owners of the eyes refused to answer for themselves. Lord Saltaire no longer moved as Agamemnon amongst his people.... And “pinching” had pinched him, making him petulant, fractious, and “gey hard to live wi’.” With dismay Cicely confronted the fact that she was half Chandos and half Danecourt. Incredible that such high breeding might be reckoned a disability——

Her trembling lips refused their office. And the words that fluttered into her perplexed mind seemed wholly inadequate. Being half Chandos, she held her tongue, wondering miserably what Tiddy would have said. She had wit enough to realise that protest would be futile. If she allowed her mother one penetrating glance into her heart, civil war must be declared between them. And her mother would suffer more than herself. Swiftly she came to the conclusion that mother must be “spared.” She decided that she would consult her old friend, Dr. Pawley. He, of course, had held his tongue; so had Goodrich. And if of late she had begun to wonder at and condemn their policy of laissez faire, now—in one illuminating moment—she understood and condoned fully their seeming moral cowardice.

She heard her mother’s voice again, soft and sweet.

“You are my own darling little girl, all I have. With God’s help and blessing we will walk together and work together. I—I——” Her voice faltered, and then became steady. “I am not selfish enough to wish to keep you to myself. I know, none better, that you need a strong man’s guidance and protection. I know, too, that you will choose your mate wisely, with an intelligent sense of all, all, I repeat, that marriage includes. Passion is an ephemeral emotion which gentlewomen distrust instinctively. At the best it must die down with the years. I was very happy in my marriage, because I found in your dear father the qualities that endure—fidelity, high honour, stainless integrity, and an unswerving purpose in the conduct of life. He did his duty. I was fortunate, also, in finding a man older and wiser than myself, in whose strength I could trust.”

She rose to her feet, standing very erect, an imposing figure in her black draperies. She might have stood thus in a Greek tragedy, impersonating one of the ParcÆ. Cicely was immensely impressed. She rose also. Her mother kissed her.

“These rooms,” she murmured, “are rather overpowering. I will go to my own and be quiet for a little. But you—you are glad to be here, aren’t you? Your memories of our dearest boy are all fragrant and happy. Perhaps I allowed my ambitions for him too great an ascendancy in my heart——”

She paused. Cicely divined that her mother’s careful choice of words indicated previous thought, self-analysis. Yes; bitter disappointment underlay her tranquil phrases. These rooms held the emptiness of an ancient house. She understood why her mother had changed them almost out of recognition.

“I am glad to be here,” she answered, in a strangled voice. “I—I hope, Mother, that I—I—I——”

She couldn’t finish the sentence. Lady Selina kissed her again.

“You will take his place,” she whispered. “That is the one consolation of my life.”

Cicely was left alone with her disquieting reflections.