“Things happen,” assented Mr. Brumley.
For a little while their minds rested upon this thought, as chasing butterflies might rest together on a flower.
“And so I am going to leave this,” Mr. Brumley resumed. “I am going up there to London for a time with my boy. Then perhaps we may travel—Germany, Italy, perhaps—in his holidays. It is beginning again, I feel with him. But then even we two must drift apart. I can’t deny him a public school sooner or later. His own road....”
“It will be lonely for you,” sympathized the lady. “I have my work,” said Mr. Brumley with a sort of valiant sadness.
“Yes, I suppose your work——”
She left an eloquent gap.
“There, of course, one’s fortunate,” said Mr. Brumley.
“I wish,” said Lady Harman, with a sudden frankness and a little quickening of her colour, “that I had some work. Something—that was my own.”
“But you have——There are social duties. There must be all sorts of things.”
“There are—all sorts of things. I suppose I’m ungrateful. I have my children.”