Three weeks later they arrived. Mr. MacDougal, the father, was a tall, lean man, with pince-nez and an interest in statistics. He was a territorial magnate to whom the Tomb estates appeared a cosy small-holding. He did not emphasize this in any boastful fashion, but in his statistical zeal gave Mrs. Kent-Cumberland some staggering figures. “Is Bessie your only child?” asked Mrs. Kent-Cumberland.

“My only child and heir,” he replied, coming down to brass tacks at once. “I dare say you have been wondering what sort of settlement I shall be able to make on her. Now that, I regret to say, is a question I cannot answer accurately. We have good years, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, and we have bad years. It all depends.”

“But I dare say that even in bad years the income is quite considerable?”

“In a bad year,” said Mr. MacDougal, “in a very bad year such as the present, the net profits, after all deductions have been made for running expenses, insurance, taxation, and deterioration, amount to something between”—Mrs. Kent-Cumberland listened breathlessly—“fifty and fifty-two thousand pounds. I know that is a very vague statement, but it is impossible to be more accurate until the last returns are in.”

Bessie was bland and creamy. She admired everything. “It’s so antique,” she would remark with relish, whether the object of her attention was the Norman Church of Tomb, the Victorian panelling in the billiard room, or the central-heating system which Gervase had recently installed. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland took a great liking to the girl.

“Thoroughly Teachable,” she pronounced. “But I wonder whether she is really suited to Tom… I wonder …”

The MacDougals stayed for four days and, when they left, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland pressed them to return for a longer visit. Bessie had been enchanted with everything she saw.

“I wish we could live here,” she had said to Tom on her first evening, “in this dear, quaint old house.”

“Yes, darling, so do I. Of course it all belongs to Gervase, but I always look on it as my home.”

“Just as we Australians look on England.”

“Exactly.”

She had insisted on seeing everything; the old gabled manor, once the home of the family, relegated now to the function of dower house since the present mansion was built in the eighteenth century—the house of mean proportions and inconvenient offices where Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, in her moments of depression, pictured her own, declining years; the mill and the quarries; the farm, which to the MacDougals seemed minute and formal as a Noah’s Ark. On these expeditions it was Gervase who acted as guide. “He, of course, knows so much more about it than Tom,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland explained.

Tom, in fact, found himself very rarely alone with his fiancée. Once, when they were all together after dinner, the question of his marriage was mentioned. He asked Bessie whether, now that she had seen Tomb, she would sooner be married there, at the village church, than in London.

“Oh there is no need to decide anything hastily,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had said. “Let Bessie look about a little first.”

When the MacDougals left, it was to go to Scotland to see the castle of their ancestors. Mr. MacDougal had traced relationship with various branches of his family, had corresponded with them intermittently, and now wished to make their acquaintance.

Bessie wrote to them all at Tomb; she wrote daily to Tom, but in her thoughts, as she lay sleepless in the appalling bed provided for her by her distant kinsmen, she was conscious for the first time of a slight feeling of disappointment and uncertainty. In Australia Tom had seemed so different from everyone else, so gentle and dignified and cultured. Here in England he seemed to recede into obscurity. Everyone in England seemed to be like Tom.

And then there was the house. It was exactly the kind of house which she had always imagined English people to live in, with the dear little park—less than a thousand acres—and the soft grass and the old stone. Tom had fitted into the house. He had fitted too well; had disappeared entirely in it and become part of the background. The central place belonged to Gervase—so like Tom but more handsome; with all Tom’s charm but with more personality. Beset with these thoughts, she rolled on the hard and irregular bed until dawn began to show through the lancet window of the Victorian-baronial turret. She loved that turret for all its discomfort. It was so antique.

Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was an active woman. It was less than ten days after the MacDougals’ visit that she returned triumphantly from a day in London. After dinner, when she sat alone with Tom in the small drawing-room, she said:

“You’ll be very much surprised to hear who I saw to day. Gladys.”

“Gladys?”

“Gladys Cruttwell.”

“Good heavens. Where on earth did you meet her?”

“It was quite by chance,” said his mother vaguely. “She is working there now.”

“How was she?”

“Very pretty. Prettier, if anything.”

There was a pause. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland stitched away at a gros-point chair seat. “You know, dear boy, that I never interfere, but I have often wondered whether you treated Gladys very kindly. I know I was partly to blame, myself. But you were both very young and your prospects so uncertain. I thought a year or two of separation would be a good test of whether you really loved one another.”

“Oh, I am sure she has forgotten about me long ago.”

“Indeed, she has not, Tom. I thought she seemed a very unhappy girl.”

“But how can you know, Mother, just seeing her casually like that?”

“We had luncheon together,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “In an A.B.C. shop.”

Another pause.

“But, look here, I’ve forgotten all about her. I only care about Bessie now.”

“You know, dearest boy, I never interfere. I think Bessie is a delightful girl. But are you free? Are you free in your own conscience? You know, and I do not know, on what terms you parted from Gladys.”

And there returned, after a long absence, the scene which for the first few months of his Australian venture had been constantly in Tom’s memory, of a tearful parting and many intemperate promises. He said nothing. “I did not tell Gladys of your engagement. I thought you had the right to do that—as best you can, in your own way. But I did tell her you were back in England and that you wished to see her. She is coming here tomorrow for a night or two. She looked in need of a holiday, poor child.”

When Tom went to meet Gladys at the station they stood for some minutes on the platform not certain of the other’s identity. Then their tentative signs of recognition corresponded. Gladys had been engaged twice in the past two years, and was now walking out with a motor salesman. It had been a great surprise when Mrs. Kent-Cumberland sought her out and explained that Tom had returned to England. She had not forgotten him, for she was a loyal and good-hearted girl, but she was embarrassed and touched to learn that his devotion was unshaken.

They were married two weeks later and Mrs. Kent-Cumberland undertook the delicate mission of “explaining everything” to the MacDougals.

They went to Australia, where Mr. MacDougal very magnanimously gave them a post managing one of his more remote estates. He was satisfied with Tom’s work. Gladys has a large sunny bungalow and a landscape of grazing land and wire fences. She does not see very much company nor does she particularly like what she does see. The neighbouring ranchers find her very English and aloof.

Bessie and Gervase were married after six weeks’ engagement. They live at Tomb. Bessie has two children and Gervase has six racehorses. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland lives in the house with them. She and Bessie rarely disagree, and, when they do, it is Mrs. Kent-Cumberland who gets her way.