One phrase, or the idea in it, was, however, much repeated in the diaries during the course of years, and towards the last almost feverishly emphasised--"Why should I bear it for one who would bear nothing for me, for his sake, who would do nothing for my sake?
Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me ?" These words were haunting Hylda's brain when the telegram from the Duchess of Snowdon came.

They followed her to Heddington, whither she went in the carriage to bring her visitor to Hamley, and kept repeating themselves at the back of her mind through the cheerful rallying of the Duchess, who spread out the wings of good-humour and motherly freedom over her.
After all, it was an agreeable thing to be taken possession of, and "put in her proper place," as the Duchess said; made to understand that her own affairs were not so important, after all; and that it was far more essential to hear the charming gossip about the new and most popular Princess of Wales, or the quarrel between Dickens and Thackeray.

Yet, after dinner, in the little sitting-room, where the Duchess, in a white gown with great pink bows, fitter for a girl fresh from Confirmation, and her cheeks with their fixed colour, which changed only at the discretion of her maid, babbled of nothing that mattered, Hylda's mind kept turning to the book of life an unhappy woman had left behind her.
The sitting-room had been that of the late Countess also, and on the wall was an oil-painting of her, stately and distant and not very alluring, though the mouth had a sweetness which seemed unable to break into a smile.
"What was she really like--that wasn't her quite, was it ?" asked Hylda, at last, leaning her chin on the hand which held the 'cello she had been playing.
"Oh, yes, it's Sybil Eglington, my dear, but done in wood; and she wasn't the graven image that makes her out to be.

That's as most people saw her; as the fellow that painted her saw her; but she had another side to her.

She disapproved of me rather, because I was squeezing the orange dry, and trying to find yesterday's roses in to-morrow's garden.
But she didn't shut her door in my face--it's hard to do that to a Duchess; which is one of the few advantages of living naked in the street, as it were, with only the strawberry leaves to clothe you.