Lady Rossiter received in silence this singular application of the Divine Law which she had promulgated so often and so indiscriminately that she had long ago come to look upon it as her own production.
"What have the children been doing?" said Mark's voice at the window. "Lady Rossiter, I'm afraid they've been worrying you dreadfully. I'm ashamed of them."
"Come in, Mark," said Edna, not without relief. "I hope, after what I've been saying to her, that Ruthie is going to make it up with Ambrose at once."
Mark lifted his daughter out of the window and despatched her in immediate search of her injured junior.
He leant against the low sill of the open window as Lady Rossiter came towards it.
She had long ago formed the habit, which she would not have admitted as being exceedingly agreeable to her, of taking it as her right to advise and question Mark Easter on all personal matters connected with his wifeless household. She belonged, indeed, to the class of those women who have a perfectly genuine love of approaching any admittedly scabreux topics which intimately and painfully touch the life of another—a form of prurience sometimes decorated with such titles as "the tender touch of a good, pure woman."
"Poor little Ruthie! I've tried to talk to her a little bit. It's motherhood that's lacking in their lives, Mark."
It might reasonably be supposed that such motherhood as the unfortunate victim to alcohol who had partnered Mark's few, unhappy years of matrimony had afforded to his children was as well out of their way, but Mark made no such unsympathetic rejoinder. He gazed at Lady Rossiter with the straight, candid look that had never held anything but honest gratitude and admiration for Sir Julian's beautiful wife.
"They are getting older," he said disconsolately, "and they do not seem to improve."
Mark paused, as though weighing this extremely lenient description of his objectionable family.