Flossie was tacking her way towards them. Joan acted on impulse. “I wish you’d give me your address,” she said “where I could write to you. Or perhaps you would not mind my coming and seeing you one day. I would like you to tell me more about my mother.” He hesitated before replying, glancing at her furtively while crumbling his bread. When he did, it was in the tone that one of her younger disciples might have ventured into a discussion with Hypatia. But he stuck to his guns.!

She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870. She had turned her country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting. “We’re a pack of hirelings,” asserted the fiery little woman. “Our pens are for sale to the highest bidder. I had a letter from Jocelyn only two days ago. He was one of the original staff of the Socialist. He writes me that he has gone as leader writer to a Conservative paper at twice his former salary. Expected me to congratulate him.”

Joan sat next to him at the round dinner-table with the child the other side of him. She noticed that he ate as far as possible with his right hand—his hands were large, but smooth and well shaped—his left remaining under the cloth, beneath which the child’s right hand, when free, would likewise disappear. For a while the conversation consisted chiefly of anecdotes by Mr. Airlie. There were few public men and women about whom he did not know something to their disadvantage. Joan, listening, found herself repeating the experience of a night or two previous, when, during a performance of Hamlet, Niel Singleton, who was playing the grave-digger, had taken her behind the scenes. Hamlet, the King of Denmark and the Ghost were sharing a bottle of champagne in the Ghost’s dressing-room: it happened to be the Ghost’s birthday. On her return to the front of the house, her interest in the play was gone. It was absurd that it should be so; but the fact remained. He hesitated, keeping his eyes upon the ground. “What’s Carleton got to do with it?” demanded Joan with a note of indignation.