"We are astonished to hear the dreadful people ever mentioned," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane heavily. "After all, if there were no dreadful fat mothers there would be no brutal sons to run about murdering and rapining." Here Mrs. Keane stopped to consider if that was quite the right word, especially in the churchyard path, because the Professor chuckled softly and Darby grinned. Changing the conversation, Mrs. Keane objected to last year's texts as disrespectful to the season.
Mrs. Brady uneasily remarked that the cotton-wool was to make pillows, and it will all look quite nice with the lights up this evening.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane replied energetically that the evening would not concern her. She passed on to interrogate Lancelot as he hopped to the motor, and wished to know if the brutal Germans really laughed when they wounded people, or if that was a newspaper lie.
Lancelot replied vaguely, the tail of his eye on the General. It was a secret carefully preserved that he had not gone beyond Boulogne. His foot was badly crushed, and he was not likely to see service again.
Then came the heaviness of Christmas luncheon. A meal which was always faintly neglected by Anne, who had dinner upon her mind, to say nothing of roast beef and plum pudding backed up by cheap sherry in the kitchen.
When it was over George Freyne helped Lancelot his nephew to his study, where he talked to him long and seriously.
A wounded man possessed the privilege of sympathy. Now was the hour to lay siege to Gheena's heart. Lancelot was not at all averse to life at Castle Freyne on a large income. The fear which he felt for his cousin Gheena now would easily turn to sulky authority when he found his position secure. A boy who had been indulged for his twenty-three years, was not likely to be a very pleasant companion through life.
Dearest George, moving his mind on its narrow ledge of cunning, decided that a new régime of petty tyranny would make his stepdaughter inclined to take her liberty at all costs, and Lancelot had promised faithfully that the Dower House would never be his father-in-law's position.
Gheena, through the soft cold which was turning to frost outside, wandered off by the sea. It shimmered in steely restlessness, mouthing white-toothed at the brown rocks. Cold held the world in its grip, the brown world looked icy, the shingle as though its touch would hurt in its chill.
"And out in the North Sea they keep watch," said a voice behind Gheena, "with the wind we find here cutting, there as a knife, and spray freezing on their eyelashes, and constant anxiety."