"I'm beginning to be afraid that Muriel may be difficult," Mary confided in her husband that evening, when she came to bid him good night.
"Oh no, I don't think so. Several of my family have been very clever, but it never led to anything unpleasant. They were clever, but always very womanly women. I think she's a nice straightforward, clean-minded English girl. Oh no, I don't believe she'll be difficult."
"I find her very hard to understand," Mary complained. "All the time I have a feeling that she is building up a wall between herself and me."
"Know what it is?" Jemmie asked. "Know what's the matter with you? You're growing old."
"Jemmie, what a horrible thing to tell me."
"Never mind, old lady. It's got to be. We're both growing old. I tell you I realize it more and more when I'm playing golf. Good night, my dear."
He offered himself to her salute without rising from the chair in which he was smoking his final cigar before a light autumnal fire in the library—the Badminton Library, as Muriel called it, for that collection of authoritative treatises on sport, together with some bound volumes of Punch and the Illustrated London News, Handley Cross, and a few novels by writers like Frank Smedley, constituted her father's literary environment.
"Growing old?" Mary repeated to herself on the way upstairs to her room. "Growing old?" she echoed once more when she stood in front of her mirror. The candlelight, apricot-shaded, flattered her reflection. Growing old at forty? What nonsense Jemmie talked! He forgot that he was fifteen years older than she. Now he certainly was growing old. How much he had aged just lately and how much he had improved with age! Dear old Jemmie, he really needed her far more than Geoffrey or Muriel needed her. He was much more a child to her than either of them. If it were not for Richard, she might begin to wonder if children were much of a consolation for growing old. And Richard would be here to-morrow. But for how long? Mary felt sick and dizzy in a sudden thought of how brief his stay might be. If he really were ordered to the front? Was it credible that he should be? Richard in danger, and Richard how many thousand miles away! She had been proud and glad when he chose to be a soldier; but war had been so remote then. It seemed only yesterday that Jemmie bought High Corner, so that the children might always spend their holidays out of London. And now the eldest of those children was liable to be sent abroad to fight for his country. High Corner without children would not be High Corner any longer. But perhaps the war would soon be over. She must read the papers more carefully. She must not skip them as she did now. She must not rely on gossip about the duration of the war. She must learn to judge for herself. And Richard would be here to-morrow.
"I must not lie awake fretting," she decided. "I must get to sleep quickly. It will be time to fret when Richard is ordered abroad."
He arrived when the sun was driving away the wraiths of morning mist and when the others were all at golf. For her, when she saw him, so tall and straight and slim and fair, coming toward her along that green walk by the phloxes, he was more radiant than the sun.