opened her eyes.

"Did he?" she said. "That explains it. He is quite terribly old now,
much, much older than other old people one sees," she said, with the
conviction of her age, to which sixty and eighty appear pretty much the
same. "You didn't mind," she went on to her mother hastily, somewhat
transparently trying to avoid a discussion of the rest of the house
party, "my staying till the afternoon train? Mrs. Feversham suggested
boating this morning, and the day was so lovely, it was too tempting to
refuse."

"I didn't mind at all," said Lady Gore. "It must have been lovely in the
boat. Did you all go?"

"N--no, not all," replied Rachel. "Mrs. Feversham would have come, but
she had some things to do at home, and Sir Charles Miniver was----"

"Too old?" Lady Gore suggested.

"I suppose so," said Rachel, "though he called it busy."

"As you say," remarked Sir William, "that does not leave many people to
go in the boat." Rachel looked at her father quickly, but with a
pliability surprising in the male mind he managed to look unconscious.
"Well, Elinor," he continued, "I think as you have a companion now, I
shall go off for a bit. I shall be back presently. Let me implore you
not to let me find too many bores at tea."

"If Miss Tarlton comes," said Lady Gore, "I will have her automatically
ejected." Sir William went out, smiling at her. The mother and
daughter, both unconsciously to themselves, watched the door close, then
Rachel got up, went to the glass over the chimneypiece and began
deliberately taking off her veil.

"I do look a sight," she said. "It is astonishing how dirty one's face
gets in London, even in a drive across the Park."

"Rachel!" her mother said. Rachel turned round and looked at her. Then
she went quickly across the room and knelt down by her mother's couch.

"Mother!" she said, "Mother dear! it is such a comfort that if I don't
tell you things you don't mind. And why should you? It doesn't matter.
It is just as if I had told you--you always know, you always
understand."

"Yes," said Lady Gore, "I think I understand. And you know," she added
after a moment, "that I never want you to tell me more than you wish to
tell. Only, very often"--and she tried to choose her words with anxious
care, that not one of them might mean more, less, or other than she
intended, "it sometimes helps younger people, if they talk to people who
are older. You see, the mere fact of having been in the world long