Mrs. Home smoothed her grey gown a little nervously.
"I am frightened of Lady Ellington," she said. "She has so very much--so very much self-possession. She is so practical, too: she always tells me all sorts of ways of managing the house, and suggests all kinds of improvements. It is very kind of her, and she is always quite right. And I think I am a little afraid of Madge."
"Ah, I can't permit that," said Philip, smiling again.
This brought their talk at once into more intimate lands.
"Ah, dear Philip," she said. "I pray God that it may go well with you!"
Philip sat upright in his chair, and the book fell unheeded to the ground.
"How did you guess?" he said. "I suspect you of being a witch, mother; and if we had lived a few hundred years ago, instead of now, it would have been my painful duty to have had you burned. It would have hurt you far more than me, because the sense of duty would have sustained me. I never said a word to you about Madge, yet you knew I was in love with her, I think, almost before I knew it myself."
"Yes, dear. I am sure I did," said Mrs. Home with gentle complacence.
"Well, you dear witch, tell me how you knew."
"Oh, Philip, it was easy to see. You never looked at any girl before like that. I used to be afraid you would never marry. You used to say dreadful things, you know, that really frightened me. Even since you were quite a little boy, you thought women were a bother. You used to say they couldn't play games, and were always in the way, and had headaches, and were without any sense of honour."
"All quite true in the main," said the misogynous Philip.
"Dear, when have you known me have a headache, or do anything dishonourable?" she asked pertinently.
"I always excepted you. And I except Madge. She beat me at croquet the other day, and in the middle of the game volunteered the information that she had not moved the ball she croquetted."
"She always would," said his mother gently. "Oh, Philip, good luck to your wooing, my dear!"
There was a long pause; a sparrow in a prodigious bustle alighted on the edge of the fountain, and drank as if it had been a traveller straight from Sahara; the wind woke again in the flower-beds and gave a long, fragrant sigh; the sun-blinds of the drawing-room stirred as it wandered by them, and the pale purple petals of a grape-bunch cluster of wisteria fell on the crimson-striped canvas. The exquisiteness of this midsummer moment struck Philip with a sudden pang of delight, none the less keen because the love with which his soul was full was not yet certain or complete: the pause before completion was his.