"She will ask you, I am sure. Or she may come to Beechhurst, as she came only a month ago, in the hope of hearing of Allan's movements from your letters to your mother."
"I was never so good a correspondent, or so good a son, as Allan."
They were at the golf-ground by this time, and here Mrs. Mornington left them; and meeting five of her particular friends on the way, told them how a strange thing had happened, and that Geoffrey Wornock, who had left England broken-hearted because Suzette had rejected him, had come back suddenly from Africa, and had been accepted.
"He took her by storm, poor child! But, after all, I believe she always preferred him to poor Allan."
There seemed nothing wanting now to Mrs. Wornock's happiness. Her son had returned, not to restlessness and impatience, not to weary again of his beautiful home, but to settle down soberly with a wife he adored.
His mother was to live with him always. The Manor House was still to be her home, the music-room her room, the organ hers. In all things she was to be as she had been—plus the son she loved, and the daughter-in-law she would have chosen for herself from all the daughters of earth.
"If it were not that I am sorry for Allan, there would not be a cloud in my sky," she told her son, on the second night after his return, when he had quieted down a little from that fever of triumphant gladness which had possessed him after his conquest of Suzette.
"Dear mother, there is no use in being sorry for Allan. We could not both be winners. To be sorry for him is to grudge me my delight; and I could easily come to believe that you are fonder of Allan than of me."
"Geoffrey!"