“No.  But he’ll be at Cheltenham or Cambridge half the time.  I must have one son at home.”

“Sorry, Mother.  But I can’t stand it here.  I’ve got to go, and I’m going.”

To all her arguments and entreaties he had one answer:  He had got to go and he was going.

Adeline left him and went to look for Eliot whom she found in his room packing to go back to London.  She came sobbing to Eliot.

“It’s too dreadfully hard.  As if it weren’t bad enough to lose my darling husband I must lose all my sons.  Not one of you will stay with me.  And there’s Anne going off with Jerrold. She may have him with her and I mayn’t.  She’s taken everything from me.  You’d have said if a wife’s place was anywhere it was with her dying husband.  But no. She was allowed to be with him and I was turned out of his room.”

“My dear Mother, you know you weren’t.”

“I was.  You turned me out yourself, Eliot, and had Anne in.”

“Only because you couldn’t stand it and she could.”

“I daresay.  She hadn’t the same feelings.”

“She had her own feelings, anyhow, only she controlled them.  She stood it because she never thought of her feelings.  She only thought of what she could do to help.  She was magnificent.”

“Of course you think so, because you’re in love with her.  She must take you, too.  As if Jerrold wasn’t enough.”

“She hasn’t taken me.  She probably won’t if I ask her.  You shouldn’t say those things, Mother.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know I’m the most unhappy woman in the world.  How am I going to live?  I can’t stand it if Jerry goes.”

“He’s got to go, Mother.”

“He hasn’t.  Jerrold’s place is here.  He’s got a duty and a responsibility.  Your dear father didn’t leave him the estate for him to let it go to wrack and ruin.  It’s most cruel and wrong of him.”

“He can’t do anything else.  Don’t you see why he wants to go?  He can’t stand the place without Father.”

“I’ve got to stand it.  So he may.”

“Well, he won’t, that’s all.  He simply funks it.”

“He always was an arrant coward where trouble was concerned.  He doesn’t think of other people and how bad it is for them.  He leaves me when I want him most.”

“It’s hard on you, Mother; but you can’t stop him.  And I don’t think you ought to try.”

“Oh, everybody tells me what I ought to do.  My children can do as they like.  So can Anne.  She and Jerrold can go off to India and amuse themselves as if nothing had happened and it’s all right.”

But Anne didn’t go off to India.

When she spoke to Jerrold about going with him his hard, unhappy face showed her that he didn’t want her.

“You’d rather I didn’t go,” she said gently.

“It isn’t that, Anne.  It isn’t that I don’t want you.  It’s—­it’s simply that I want to get away from here, to get away from everything that reminds me—­I shall go off my head if I’ve got to remember every minute, every time I see somebody who—­I want to make a clean break and grow a new memory.”