he said, and felt easier now that her
name had at last come into the talk. "She's longing to meet you."

"Then why didn't she meet me?"

"Here, do you mean? At the station? Well, I--I wanted you to see her
for the first time in pleasanter surroundings."

"Oh!" said Lady Underhill shortly.

It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much
by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and
impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us. If Jill had been
permitted by her wary fiance to come with him to the station to meet
his mother it is certain that much trouble would have been avoided.
True, Lady Underhill would probably have been rude to her in the
opening stages of the interview, but she would not have been alarmed
and suspicious; or, rather, the vague suspicion which she had been
feeling would not have solidified, as it did now into definite
certainty of the worst. All that Derek had effected by his careful
diplomacy had been to convince his mother that he considered his
bride-elect something to be broken gently to her.

She stopped and faced him.

"Who is she?" she demanded. "Who is this girl?"

Derek flushed.

"I thought I made everything clear in my letter."

"You made nothing clear at all."

"By your leave!" chanted a porter behind them, and a baggage-truck
clove them apart.

"We can't talk in a crowded station," said Derek irritably. "Let me
get you to the taxi and take you to the hotel.... What do you want to
know about Jill?"

"Everything. Where does she come from? Who are her people? I don't
know any Mariners."

"I haven't cross-examined her," said Derek stiffly. "But I do know
that her parents are dead. Her father was an American."

"American!"

"Americans frequently have daughters, I believe."

"There is nothing to be gained by losing your temper," said Lady
Underhill with steely calm.

"There is nothing to be gained, as far as I can see, by all this
talk," retorted Derek. He wondered vexedly why his mother always had
this power of making him lose control of himself. He hated to lose
control of himself. It upset him, and blurred that vision which he
liked to have of himself as a calm, important man superior to ordinary
weaknesses. "Jill and I are engaged, and there is an end to it."

"Don't be a fool," said Lady Underhill, and was driven away by another
baggage-truck. "You know perfectly well," she resumed, returning to
the attack, "that your marriag