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 roles 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 had been corners and by-ways of the big, rambling old garden filled with poignant, almost unbearable, associations of the days when she and Godfrey had been lovers.