‘I had no idea,’ said Sydney thoughtfully, and longed to know exactly how his mother had described her. Ronald might have been a key to a great deal; instead, he had his own obscure preoccupations. Except for his eyes and forehead and a few gestures and mannerisms which cropped up over-importantly in his conversation, out of tone with the rest of him, he in no way resembled his mother. Mrs Kerr, at least, had not cared to replace herself What qualities he had of hers had been given over to him unreservedly; they did not seem in any way to be shared or to bring the two into closer community. He, like the rest, revolved round his mother inquiringly with a perhaps more intimate but with the same exterior curiosity. He was at most two or three steps higher up the base of the monument: from here he said wisely to Sydney: ‘My mother, you know, is intelligent. She understands, or she wouldn’t admire.’

‘I suppose she wouldn’t,’ said Sydney, and let the thing drop. But though Mrs Kerr’s son did not interest her she felt drawn towards him as though he were part of her youth, and she asked, looking back for a landmark to measure how far she had travelled, ‘And you really do mean, I suppose, to make rather a difference?’

‘Well, one can’t help hoping one may,’ said Ronald, smiling at himself, very elderly and indulgent. ‘Usen’t you, too?’

‘Usen’t?’ said Sydney, aggrieved at being so taken up.

‘Oh, I suppose you still may; but you can’t overlook Mr Milton.’ Saying this, he tried vainly to reconcile the importance and solitariness in which she had just now been discovered with his idea of her as the engaged girl. She sat looking down, with a faint droop (he thought he detected), a hint of contrition, an acquiescence to being set aside, of which she seemed to be making a rather too sardonic and cool exhibition. She felt this and said deferentially:

‘Of course you’ve got no patience with this sort of thing?’

‘I may be young,’ said Ronald, ‘but I’m never so grossly ingenuous as downright to commit myself.’ He began kicking the rock with his heel and, with pursed mouth and a gleam of amusement she was not intended to share, withheld his opinion.

‘Why,’ she asked in surprise, ‘who said you were young?’

‘Oh, I understand you did. But of course,’ he said lightly, anxious that they should neither of them be embarrassed, ‘it seems an impression one’s bound to create. Would you ever have minded – why should one?’ He looked serenely past her down the valley – a little, she thought, too serenely. Evidently he did mind. If he had not been likely to mind why should his mother have told him? ‘Of course,’ he vouchsafed, ‘it is in a general way a mistake to involve oneself anywhere.’