A few weeks after the elopement he’d had a letter. She asked him to come and see her. They were alone together, and she’d cried when they met. Edward had never thought of Mary as being given to tears; it was the disappearance of one more familiar landmark in his changed world. For Mary was certainly changed. She seemed very determined and yet very submissive—ready, if necessary, to be defiant.

She wanted, naturally, to see Richard. And so Edward had gone almost direct from the untidy little house in Chelsea to the tidy little house in Earl’s Court. From Mary closing the front door in an apron to a smart parlour-maid opening it in a cap. Richard, also, he’d seen alone. Edward had accepted his mission impulsively, sure of success. He expected Richard to be upset, of course; even, perhaps, conventionally shocked—as he himself had been—even, perhaps, angry. What he hadn’t expected was Richard’s shamefaced attitude of helplessness. For he didn’t condemn. He was only very uncomfortable. He didn’t, he said, see how he could visit Mary “behind the Mater’s back.” He was incredible and absurd—absurd as everything to do with the new Richard, absurd as his cosy little smoking-room with its washy pictures, absurd as his embroidered slippers. “Behind Lily’s back, you mean,” Edward had been startled by anger into replying.

But Richard, as ever, wouldn’t be roused:

“It’d put her in a very difficult position.”

Edward asked fiercely how, and was told that he didn’t quite understand. “Perhaps later on,” Richard mumbled, things would be “easier.” This was too much:

“You seem to have forgotten that Mary’s your sister.”

That was the end of their interview. They parted—Edward furious, Richard pained and clumsily repeating that they “must meet again soon.”

Mary had to be told—though Edward glossed over what he could. She was bitterly wounded he could see, but she took it calmly:

“Very well. Dick must do just as he likes. I shan’t bother him again.”

*   *   *