Considerably embarrassed, Kate stammered: “There has been very little to manage, ma’am. I only wish there had been more! I am conscious—deeply conscious!—of—of how much I owe to your kindness!”

“Yet you will not do the only thing I have ever asked of you!” said Lady Broome, with a melancholy smile.

Kate had been about to return to her chair, but at these words she checked, and stiffened. She said, in a constrained voice: “If you mean, ma’am, as I believe you do, that I won’t marry Torquil, I beg you will say no more! It is too much to ask of me!”

“Is it? I told you to think it over, Kate, but I’m afraid you haven’t done so. You have only perceived the evils of such a marriage: not its advantages. Believe me, these are very real! You are no longer a girl, dreaming of romance: you must surely be considering your future, for you don’t want for sense. Sit down!”

“Aunt Minerva, pray say no more!” Kate begged.

“Don’t argue with me, girl!” Lady Broome said, with a flash of temper. “Sit down!” She controlled herself with a visible effort, and forced up a smile. “Come! I have something to tell you—something I have never told anyone, not even Delabole!” She waited until Kate had reluctantly resumed her seat, and then held out a coaxing hand. “Don’t hold off from me!” she said caressingly. “That would quite break my heart, for I have come to love you dearly, you know.” Her fingers closed round Kate’s hand, and held it. “There! That’s better! You are the only comfort left to me, child—the only hope! Do you think me a happy woman? I’m not. Life has used me harshly, I think: everything I most wanted has been denied me! I wonder what sins I can have committed to have made fate punish me so cruelly?”

“Oh, don’t say so, dear ma’am!” Kate interrupted. “You are not yourself! This is nothing but a sick fancy!”

Lady Broome sighed, and shook her head. “No, alas, it is the truth. I have put a brave face on it, but I’ve failed in everything I set out to do. I hope you will never know how bitter a thing that is.”

“Now, how can I tell you civilly that you are talking nonsense?” said Kate, in a rallying tone. “If the effect of my visit is to cast you into dejection I shall be in hot water with Dr Delabole, and Sidlaw too, and very likely I shall be forbidden to come near you again! Tell me, if you please, if you failed when you set out to make Staplewood beautiful?”

’Ah, you don’t understand!” said Lady Broome. “I only did so because I realized, when I was obliged to give up all that I most enjoyed, that unless I could discover something of interest to keep me occupied I should mope myself to death. You must remember that I was still a young woman when I knew that I must bring Sir Timothy here, not for a visit merely, but for the rest of his life. That was a severe blow. I have grown accustomed, but in those days I detested the country. Your father told you how ambitious I was, but I don’t think he knew that my most passionate ambition was not to marry a duke, but to escape from the intolerable boredom of my home! My father—your grandfather, my love—was not of a sociable disposition. In fact, he was excessively untoward, and he had my unfortunate mother quite under his thumb. Had it not been for his sister, I should have found myself buckled to the Squire’s son before I had been allowed even a glimpse of London! She, however, offered to bring me out, and to frank me for one Season. She was married to a man of birth and property, and moved in the first circles. She had married her daughters to men of fortune and consideration, and said she would do the same by me. But she reckoned without my lack of dowry.”

Kate blinked. “But surely, ma’am—I mean, when my grandfather cut Papa out of his Will, you must have been heiress to all his property!”

“I was, but he was never wealthy, and he suffered some bad reverses on “Change. I was used to think him a shocking pinch-penny, until my mother explained matters to me. Well, that’s past history: I’ve told you only that you may understand why I married Sir Timothy. I had many admirers, but the only offers I received were from men I could not like well enough to marry. My aunt said I was a great deal too nice, and I knew she wouldn’t invite me to spend a second Season in Mount Street; indeed, she told me that if I threw away my chances she would wash her hands of me. And I knew that if I went back to my home at the end of the Season I should never see London again. I can tell you, I was in such despair that I could almost have brought myself to marry any man who could give me position, and the means to live up to it! But then Sir Timothy proposed to me, and I became engaged to him.” She saw that this story was winning no response, and pressed Kate’s hand, saying with a faint smile: “Ah, you are thinking that I was very mercenary, are you not? I wish you had known Sir Timothy twenty years ago: one of the most charming men imaginable! So handsome, too! He fell in love with me as soon as he saw me. It was at the Opera. He came up to my aunt’s box, and begged for an introduction.”

“And you, ma’am? Did you fall in love with him?”

’No, no! I liked him very well, but I had no notion then that he would one day propose to me. He is twenty years older than I am, you know, and in those days that seemed very old indeed to me. I respected him, however, and gladly accepted his offer. My aunt told me that it was indelicate of me to show joy at my engagement, but Sir Timothy didn’t think so: it made him very happy, for he was afraid that he might be too old to make me happy. The Broomes said he was infatuated. His sister Mariaan odious woman!—told him that he would soon become a cuckold if he married a girl young enough to have been his daughter. So vulgar! I have always been glad that she didn’t die until she had been forced to acknowledge that she had wickedly misjudged me. But they all disliked me, and Philip, of course, positively hated me! He was the most disagreeable boy: as self-important then as he is today! But we were married in spite of them, and I became most sincerely attached to Sir Timothy. He wanted an heir, and when Torquil was born he thought nothing too good for me. His first wife had not cared for London, so the Broome town house had been disposed of, but because I loved London he bought a house in Berkeley Square for me. Oh, how happy I was—for just three years! London, for the Season; then Brighton; then back to London again, for a few weeks; then visits to our particular friends—large house-parties, you understand! Theatricals were all the rage: I recall going to the Priory, at Stanmore, when Lady Cahir took the chief part in Who’s the Dupe, a most diverting farce, and very well played. Then we had parties here, always during the hunting season. I once held one over Christmas: that was a triumph indeed! And—”

“But where was Torquil?” Kate interrupted. “Did you take him with you?”

“Good God, no! I did keep him in London for a time, but it did not agree with him: he was always ailing, and Sir Timothy became so nervous that he would lose him—the children of his first marriage all died, as I daresay you’ve been told—that I sent him here, with his nurse.”

“I wonder you could bear to part with him!” Kate said, before she could stop herself.

“My dear child, I make no secret of the fact that I am not one of those women who dote on infants! To own the truth, I find them repulsive! They are for ever screaming, or dribbling, or being sick! Besides, his nurse managed him far better than I could—even had I not been much too busy to make the attempt. To be a successful hostess takes up one’s time and energy, I promise you. And I was successful. And then it ended.”

She stopped, leaving Kate at a loss for something sympathetic to say. Having no social ambition herself, and with the unfading memory of her mother, who could never bear to be parted from either her husband or her child, it was difficult for her to appreciate what her enforced abandonment of a life of high fashion had meant to her aunt. That it had meant a great deal to her was patent in her face. Lady Broome was looking into the past with fixed, embittered eyes, and her mouth set rigidly. In desperation, Kate faltered: “It must have been very hard for you, ma’am.”

Her words recalled Lady Broome from her abstraction. She brought her eyes round to Kate’s face, and said “Hard!…” A contemptuous little laugh shook her. “No, you don’t understand, do you?”

“You see, I don’t think I should enjoy the sort of life you’ve described,” Kate excused herself. “So I can’t enter into your feelings. But I do understand that—that coming here to live—giving up all that you liked so much—must have been a sacrifice.”

“No one has ever known what it cost me, not even Sidlaw! Whatever my faults, I’ve never been one of those women who weep and whine, and fall into lethargies, throwing everyone into gloom with their die-away airs! And no one—not even Maria!—could accuse me of failing in my duty to my sick husband! I sold the town house; I took on my shoulders all the business which Sir Timothy was too enfeebled to attend to; and devoted myself to Staplewood, knowing how much he loved it! I hadn’t cared, until then, to acquaint myself with its history, but to please him I began to study the Broome records, and to bring them into order. I had supposed that it would be a drudgery, but I became fascinated. I believe I know more about the Broomes than Sir Timothy does—and I sometimes think I care more! But there was one thing he cared for, and had never disclosed to me. It wasn’t until I found the genealogical tree—at the bottom of a chest, full of old letters, and accounts, and forgotten deeds—that I realized that for two hundred years Staplewood, and the title, had descended from father to son in unbroken sequence. How many families can boast of that? I understood then why Sir Timothy was so anxious every time Torquil contracted some childish ailment, and I became determined that it should be no fault of mine if he descended, like the children of Sir Timothy’s first marriage, into an early grave.”