ace; and then she was
afraid.

She was considering Harry, his coming, and his probable bearing on
present conditions, and she knew that once again the Trojan walls were
in danger. It seemed to her, as she sat there, cruelly unfair that the
son of the House, the man who in a little while would stand before the
world as the head of the Trojan tradition, should be the chief
instrument in the attempted destruction of the same. She had not liked
Harry in the old days. She had always, even as a girl, a very stern
idea of the dignity of the House. Harry had never fulfilled this idea,
had never even attempted to. He had been wild, careless,
undisciplined, accompanying strange uncouth persons on strange uncouth
adventures; he had been almost a byword in the place. No, she had not
liked him; she had almost hated him at one time. And then after he had
gone away she had deliberately forgotten him; she had erased his name
from the fair sheet of the Trojan record, and had hoped that the House
would never more be burdened by his undisciplined history. Then she
had heard that there was a son and heir, and her one thought had been
of capture, deliverance of the new son of the House from his father's
influence. She was not deliberately cruel in her determination; she
saw that the separation must hurt the father, but she herself was ready
to make sacrifice for the good of the House and she expected the same
self-denial in others. Harry made no difficulties. New Zealand was no
place for a lonely widower to bring up his boy, and Robin was sent
home. From that moment he was the centre of Clare's world; much
self-denial can make a woman good, only maternity can make her divine.
To bring the boy up for the House, to tutor him in all the little and
big things that a Trojan must know and do, to fit him to take his place
at the head of the family on a later day; all these things she laboured
for, day and night without ceasing, and without divided interests. She
loved the boy, too, passionately, with more than a mother's love, and
now she looked back over what had been her life-work with pride and
satisfaction. She had tried to forget Harry. She hoped, although she
never dared to face the thought in her heart, that he would die there,
away in that foreign country, without coming back to them again. Robin
was hers now; she had educated him, loved him, scolded him--he was all
hers, she would brook no division. Then, when she had hea