n enough to pay you compliments and run
your errands. I'd only Kit. Couldn't you have let me keep him? What did
you want with my boy's love. You'd nothing to give him in return?"

"I had!" protested Magda indignantly. "You're wrong. I was very fond of
Kit. I gave him my friendship."

Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady
Raynham was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.

"Friendship?" repeated the latter with bitter scorn. "Friendship? Then
God help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was
the best and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his
work--wild to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were
nothing in his profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came! You
turned his head, filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else--work,
duty, everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You spoilt
his chances--spoilt his whole life. And now I've lost him. I don't know
where he is--whether he is dead or alive." She paused. "I think he's
dead," she said dully.

"I'm sorry if--"

"Sorry!" Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was giving
way under the strain of the interview. "Sorry if my son has taken his
own life--"

"He hasn't," asserted Magda desperately. "He was far too sensible
and--and ordinary."

"Yes. Till you turned his head!"

Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said all
she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.

"I won't--I won't be blamed like this!" she exclaimed rebelliously.
"It's unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with
me? You--you might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or
short--or good or bad!"

The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested by
that last defiant phrase.

"I do," she said sternly. "It's women like you who are responsible
whether men are good--or bad."

In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear through
the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady Raynham
waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead--dead by his own hand--she
had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad, rash act he
had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.

Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the nature
of a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired Alicia
Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defendi