fence; it is one of the penalties attached to the gift of humour. Percy
often tells me I should be more careful; but my dear Percy's wonderful
caution, that has helped to make him what he is, is a thing that no mere
reckless woman can hope to emulate.

2

I am diverging from the point. I must begin with that dreadful evening of
the 4th of September last. Clare was dining with a friend in town, and
stopping at Jane's house in Hampstead for the night. Percy and I were
spending a quiet evening at our house at Potter's Bar. We were both busy
after dinner; he was in his study, and I was in my den, as I call it,
writing another instalment of 'Rhoda's Gift' for the _Evening Hustle_, I
find I write my best after dinner; my brain gets almost feverishly
stimulated. My doctor tells me I ought not to work late, it is not fair
on my nerves, but I think every writer has to live more or less on his or
her nervous capital, it is the way of the reckless, squandering,
thriftless tribe we are.

Laying down my pen at 10.45 after completing my chapter, the telephone
bell suddenly rang. The maids had gone up to bed, so I went into the hall
to take the call, or to put it through to Percy's study, for the late
calls are usually, of course, for him, from one of the offices. But it
was not for him. It was Jane's voice speaking.

'Is that you, mother?' she said, quite quietly and steadily. 'There's
been an accident. Oliver fell downstairs. He fell backwards and broke his
neck. He died soon after the doctor came.'

The self-control, the quiet pluck of these modern girls! Her voice hardly
shook as she uttered the terrible words.

I sat down, trembling all over, and the tears rushed to my eyes. My
darling child, and her dear husband, cut off at the very outset of their
mutual happiness, and in this awful way! Those stairs--I always hated
them; they are so steep and narrow, and wind so sharply round a corner.

'Oh, my darling,' I said. 'And the last train gone, so that I can't be
with you till the morning! Is Clare there?'

'Yes,' said Jane. 'She's lying down.... She fainted.'

My poor darling Clare! So highly-strung, so delicate-fibred, far more
like me than Jane is! And I always had a suspicion that her feeling for
dear Oliver went very deep--deeper, possibly, than any of us ever
guessed. For, there is no doubt about it, poor Oliver did woo Clare; if
he wasn't in love with her he was very near it, before he went off at a
tangent after J