Upstairs Mrs. Uniacke was lying back against the pillows and enjoying the rare luxury of a quiet rest in bed.
"I hope they're getting on all right?" Her thoughts were with the pair below. "I don't know how it is that Jill seems always to upset Stephen."
She knew her children resented his presence and the claim he made upon her time. But habit was too strong for her, and each day cemented the tie. She had always leaned. From nursery days she had never learnt to stand alone, and since her husband's death Stephen had slowly become a part of her life.
The friendship was that rare achievement, a purely platonic affair. Perhaps, as her children grew older, strong and capable, she missed the sense of tenderness about her, the touch of baby clinging hands. With all her utterly feminine nature, she longed to comfort and to guide. And in this parasite who had crept into the heart of her home she found the two attributes needed in her barren and widowed life.
She could "mother" him. He loved "fuss," with none of her children's independence. And at the same time she could lean on his young strength and masculine mind.
But her thoughts of him were utterly pure. It was no sentimental affair cropping up in her middle age with a last desperate clutch at romance.
And to strengthen the link between them stood the Cause—the cry of Woman's wrongs; the excitement of new-found power and the secret thrill of martyrdom.
She had reached an impressionable age, and broken by her great sorrow—for her husband had been the love of her life—her arms went out to her suffering sisters.
If only she could ease the burden, throw her failing strength into the balance, she could die with the sense of something achieved.
Humbly she offered her "widow's mite."