And to that question there was absolutely no answer.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHIVALROUS BARONET
Lady Poole and her daughter had been living in rooms in the great Palace Hotel at Brighton for a fortnight.
Marjorie, utterly broken down by the terrible mystery that enveloped her, and shrinking from the fierce light that began to beat upon the details of her private life, had implored her mother to take her from London.
There had been a terrible scene between the old lady and her daughter when, the day after Marjorie had written to Sir William Gouldesbrough telling him that she could not marry him, she had confessed the truth to Lady Poole.
In her anger and excitement the elder woman had said some bitter and terrible things. She was transformed for a space from the pleasant and easy-going society dame into something hard, furious, and even coarse. Marjorie had shrunk in amazement and fear from the torrent of her mother's wrath. And finally she had been able to bear it no longer, and had lost consciousness.
Allowances should be made for the dowager. She was a worldly woman, good and kind as far as she went, but purely worldly and material. The hope of her life had seemed gained when her daughter became engaged to Sir William. The revelation that, after all, the engagement was now broken, was nothing more than a delusion, and that a younger and ineligible man, from the worldly point of view, had won Marjorie's affection, was a terrible blow to the woman of the world. All her efforts seemed useless. The object of her life, so recently gained, so thoroughly enjoyed, was snatched away from her in a sudden moment.
But when Marjorie had come to herself again, and the doctor had been summoned to treat her for a nervous shock, she found her mother once more the kindly and loved parent of old. Lady Poole had been frightened at her own violence, and repented bitterly for what she had said. She tended and soothed the girl in the sweetest and most motherly way. And without disguising from Marjorie the bitter blow the girl's decision was to her, she told her that she was prepared to accept the inevitable, and to re-organize all her ideas for the future.