He turned in his disconcerting, monumental way and looked at his questioner, who had imitated with a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause before the word mother.

Colville smiled pleasantly at him.
"I tell you frankly, Captain," he said, "it would suit me better if she wasn't the mother." "I am not here to suit you," murmured Captain Clubbe, without haste or hesitation.
"No.

Well, let us say for the present that she was the mother.

We can discuss that another time.

When did she die ?" "Seven years after landing here." Colville made a mental calculation and nodded his head with satisfaction at the end of it.