Keith, presumably, took after his mother, a hectic, pale-haired, woman who had died in the supreme effort of his birth.

On her own birth there had been something in the nature of a slur.

She had taken it to heart, and exhausted herself in the endeavour to conceal from her very respectable husband the shameful fact that she had once served as barmaid in a City restaurant, and that she was the illegitimate daughter of a village sempstress and a village squire.

Isaac, before he dreamed of greatness, had met her at a Band of Hope meeting, and had married her because of her sweetness and pathetic beauty.

She left to her boy her fairness, her expressive face, her own nerves and her mother's passion.