Only just occasionally, if the interview had been specially trying, she
might have been seen afterwards to glance whimsically across to the
picture, recently enlarged from an old photograph, of a fine-looking
man in full hunting-rig standing beside a favourite hunter.

"Poor old dad," she murmured once; "I don't wonder you couldn't keep up
the old place. I don't know how you got along at all without my
salary."

Once when she was feeling the drag of it all a little keenly she told
the man in the picture: "Mother is splendidly handsome, and I daresay I
owe her a good deal; but thank God you were there with your fine old
name and family to give me the things that matter most. It sometimes
seems as if we had got each other still, dad, and, for the rest, some
are frail in one way and some another, and fretting doesn't help any
one." The fine eyes had grown more whimsically wistful looking into
the face of the huntsman as she finished: "Anyhow, the last favourite
is second cousin to a duke, and she pointed out to me, he might have
been only a butcher."

How much Hal knew of her mother's life Lorraine had never been able to
gauge, but she had reason to think she knew something and was sporting
enough to pretend otherwise. If so, she blessed her for it, feeling
that by that generous non-acknowledgment she rendered a service both to
her and her dead father.

Yet it seemed strange that any one so young and fresh as Hal should be
able to act thus, instead of suffering a violent repulsion. Was it the
depth of her splendid friendship; or was it a naturally adaptable,
common-sense nature; or was it non-comprehension?