And why do you wait, nurse?
I will call you if I want you." Michael felt one moment of sickening spiritual terror.

He understood quite plainly why Nurse Baker did not want him to go near to his mother, and the reason of it gave him this pang, not of nervousness but of black horror, that the sane and the sensitive must always feel when they are brought intimately in contact with some blind derangement of instinct in those most nearly allied to them.

Physically, on the material plane, he had no fear at all.
He made a movement, grasping the arm of his chair, as if to wheel it closer, but he came actually no nearer her.
"Why don't you go away, nurse ?" said Lady Ashbridge, "and leave my son and me to talk about our nice day in the country ?" Nurse Baker answered quite naturally.
"I want to talk, too, my lady," she said.

"I went with you and Lord Comber.

We all enjoyed it together." It seemed to Michael that his mother made some violent effort towards self-control.