"You know her reason, of course, Aunt Violet," she said quietly, but with a certain firm resolve to speak. "No, let me go on: she told me about it only the other day. Of course, poor Harold's death must have been terrible for her, but it is awful, it is awful, I think, to take it the way she does. She still thinks that he died by no accident, but that he was intentionally shot by some man with whom he was out shooting. I asked her what his name was, but she would not tell me. And for all this time, once a year, on the day of Harold's death, she comes to England, puts red flowers on his grave, and returns. Oh, it is awful!"
Lady Oxted did not reply at once. "She still thinks so about it?" she asked at length.
"Yes; she told me herself. But I hope, perhaps, that her refusing to tell me the man's name—I asked only the evening before I left—may mean that she is beginning to wish to forget it. She wished, at any rate, that I should not know. Do you think it may be so?"
"I can't tell, Evie. Your mother——" and she stopped.
"Yes?"
"Only this. Your mother is hard to get at, inaccessible. It is almost impossible to know what she feels on subjects about which she feels deeply. I once tried to talk to her about it, but she would not. She heard what I had to say, but that was all."
The girl assented, then paused a moment.
"Poor mother, what an awful year for her!" she said. "She had only married my father, you know, a few months before Harold's death, and before the year was out Harold, her only son, was dead, and she was left twice a widow and childless. I was not born for six months after my father's death. How strange never to have seen one's father!"
They drove in silence for a space. Then the girl said suddenly:
"Aunt Violet, promise me that you will never tell me the name of the man who was out shooting with Harold. You see my mother would not tell me when I asked her; surely that means she wishes that I should not know."