"Quite old enough," Lady Wychcote said firmly. "I wonder you never thought of it yourself."
"We couldn't have afforded it in town," Sophy said with some stiffness. Her mother-in-law's tone was supercilious.
"Pf!" said Lady Wychcote. "You know Gerald has a faible for you. You'd only to hint it."
Sophy reddened.
"I don't hint for things," she said still more stiffly.
"Well, well! Don't let's tiff over it," Lady Wychcote retorted loftily. "We're not congenial, but I've taken a fancy to my grandson. Let that mollify you."
Sophy gazed out at the bleared landscape, that looked wavy like a bad print thus seen through the streaming window-pane. She realised in that moment that unhappiness filled her to the least crevice of her being. She needed kindness so bitterly, and here as her only companion was this frigid, acrid woman who disliked her for having married Cecil, and grudged her Gerald's friendship. Then she glanced back at the familiar group before the fire. Bobby was leaning forward against the beautifully corseted figure of his grandparent, eagerly demanding to know more about his "gee-gee."
A terror seized Sophy—a sort of blind fear. Was this the beginning of a new misery? Would Lady Wychcote try to get her son from her? Was she laying plans behind that smooth, narrow brow? Insidiously, little by little, as the dreary years crept by, would she try to wean Bobby from her, influence him against her? Did she lust for him to make of him what she had failed to make of Cecil and Gerald? She felt as if she must snatch Bobby from that well-preserved breast, and run to hide with him in the nethermost parts of the earth. It was a feeling stronger than reason, one of those presentiments which seized her sometimes—which so often came true. A powerful, eerie feeling of knowing without being able to say why—like the knowledge that had come to her when she told Olive Arundel that she would meet Amaldi in a room with three windows. Then she shook the feeling off. The very instance that she had recalled calmed her. There had been three windows, true. But evidently Amaldi was to play no important part in her life. She might not see him for years, if ever. Olive had told her that he was returning to Italy in July.
Miller came to give Bobby his luncheon and the two ladies left the nursery together. As they passed through the baize door that shut the corridor leading to the nursery from the rest of the house, Lady Wychcote said, "Come to my room a moment, please. I've something to show you that may interest you."
She unlocked a little ivory box on her dressing-table and took out a miniature, framed as a locket. "My father, when he was a child," she said briefly. "Do you see the likeness?"