She has five children. Mother says it's four too
many, as her husband's a cripple." Timmy waited a moment. "We haven't got
a parlourmaid now. Mother says we lead the simple life."
"The devil you do!" cried Radmore, diverted, and then, not till then, did
he suddenly become aware that he and his godson were not alone.
"Why, Betty!" he exclaimed in a voice he tried to make quite ordinary,
"I didn't see you. Have you been there the whole time?"--the whole time
being but half a minute at the longest.
And then he strode across the room, and, taking her two hands in his
strong grasp, brought her forward, rather masterfully, to the window
through which he had just come.
"You're just the same," he said, but there was a doubtful note in his
voice, and then as she remained silent, though she smiled a little
tremulously, he went on:--
"Nine years have made an awful difference to me--nine years _and_ the
war! But Beechfield, from what I've been able to see of it, seems exactly
the same--not a twig, not a leaf, not a stone out of place!"
"We didn't expect you for another hour at least," said Betty, in her
quiet, well-modulated voice.
She was wondering whether he remembered, as she now remembered with a
kind of sickening vividness, the last time they had been together in this
room--for it was here, in the dining-room of Old Place, that they had
spent their last miserable, heart-broken moment together, a moment when
all the angry bitterness had been merged in wild, piteous tenderness, and
heart-break.
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