In early Victorian days women of Betty Tosswill's class and kind worked
many of their most anxious thoughts and fears, hopes and fancies, into
the various forms of needlework which were then considered the only
suitable kind of occupation for a young gentlewoman; and often Betty,
when engaged on the long and arduous task of washing up for her big
family party, pondered over the problems and secret anxieties which
assailed her. Though something of a pain, it had also been to her a great
relief to realise that the living flesh and blood Godfrey Radmore of
to-day had ousted the passionately devoted, if unreasonable and violent,
lover of her early girlhood. In the old days, intermingled with her deep
love of Radmore, there had been a protective, almost maternal, feeling,
and although Radmore had been four years older than herself, she had
always felt the older of the two. But now, in spite of the responsible,
anxious work she had done in France during the War, she felt that the
rôles were reversed, and that her one-time lover had become infinitely
older than she was herself in knowledge of the world.

Old Nanna hoped that Miss Betty would go upstairs and change her plain
cotton dress for something just a little prettier and that she would put
on, maybe, a hat trimmed with daisies which Nanna admired. But Betty did
nothing of the sort. She washed her hands at the sink, and then she went
out into the hall, and taking up her big plain old garden hat went
straight out into the keen autumnal air.

And then, as she caught sight of the tall man and of the little boy,
she stayed her steps, overwhelmed by a flood of both sweet and bitter
memories.

During the year which had followed the breaking of her engagement there