cient Miss Egan, who bustled about with a hard, professional manner, and then the rattling, noisy sounds of Doctor Jenkins' Ford as he arrived from the village, and the far-off hoot of a strange motor-horn and a brilliant glare of light as a big motor rounded the corner of the lane at the foot of the drive and swept away toward Brook Cottage. The hall seemed suddenly alive with people, whispering and murmuring together, and there was a sound of hysterical sobbing from some frightened servant. Death, which ought to occur in the quiet beauty of solitude, was being robbed of all its dignity. They would behave like this for days. She knew that it was only now, in the midst of all that pitiful hubbub, that she had lost her son. He had been hers still, after a fashion, while she was alone there in the room.
Abruptly, in the midst of the flurry, she remembered that there were others besides herself. There was Sybil, who had come in and stood beside her, grave and sympathetic, pressing her mother's hand in silence; and Anson, who stood helplessly in the corner, more awkward and useless and timid than ever in the face of death. But most of all, there was John Pentland. He was not in the room. He was nowhere to be seen.
She went to search for him, because she knew that he would never come there to face all the others; instead, he would hide himself away like a wounded animal. She knew that there was only one person whom he could bear to see. Together they had fought for the life of the boy and together they must face the cold, hard fact of his death.
She found him standing on the terrace, outside the tall windows that opened into the drawing-room, and as she approached, she saw that he was so lost in his sorrow that he did not even notice her. He was like a man in a state of enchantment. He simply stood there, tall and stiff and austere, staring across the marshes in the direction of the
