“He seems to be a worker,” she said with an attempt to brighten things up. She resented being forced thus into the position of Lawrence’s defender: but it was true that she credited him with tenacity.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

The mother spoke these words in such a curious tone that Joanna looked full at her. But she looked away again in distaste of what she saw.

“I suppose he has told you,” Mr. Urquhart pursued, “that his present fellowship ends within the year?”

Joanna wished angrily that Lawrence would come and interrupt this stifling conversation. Why was he not there? Was there a purpose in his absence? But while she longed to disclaim any knowledge whatever of his affairs, she found herself speaking against her will of the thesis she knew Lawrence was just then writing on some anthropological subject in competition for the Hume Fellowship.

“Ah! I’m glad he confides in you, Mrs. – Joanna,” said Mrs. Urquhart. “Of course he will have told you of the trip to the continent he is bent on taking shortly with this Mr. Nilsson?”

“With Carl Nilsson? Really!” Joanna exclaimed, now with genuine pleasure. “How I envy your son! I’m sure no one could be a more perfect travelling companion than Carl. I’m so glad. It was I who introduced them to each other, you know.”

It would not be true to say there was no ring of defiance in Joanna’s enthusiasm; and the sense of conflict between the two women increased.

“I haven’t a word to say against Mr. Nilsson.” Mrs. Urquhart spoke in cold reproof. “I have never met the man. I merely hope he realizes that the boy’s work has to come first. You, my dear, will understand me when I say it is pure mother love makes me so anxious. Nothing must distract Lawrence’s attention from his work at present. You have seen already that I grudge him no reasonable pleasure.”

During this speech, and more of the same kind that followed, Joanna felt like a fly which is trussed up more and more completely in the scarcely perceptible trammels of a spider. Great was her relief when a sound in the passage outside told of Lawrence’s arrival.

Mrs. Urquhart, who had heard also, rose and moved to make the tea with an agility surprising in one so stout.

“I always feel,” she concluded, just before her son came in, “that a female friend, a little older than himself, can have such a very steadying effect on a young man.”

During tea, Lawrence spoke and ate little but he looked more than once from Joanna to his mother, and from his mother back again to Joanna. More than once his mother reproached him for his inattentiveness in the matter of handing cakes. But she herself made up for this by constantly pressing food upon her guest. She was affronted when Joanna refused a second kind of jam.