All these things, which for years had been presented to Lady Ashbridge's notice without attracting her attention; now filled her with minute childlike pleasure; they were discoveries as entrancing and as magical as the first finding of the oval pieces of blue sky that a child sees one morning in a hedge-sparrow's nest.

Now that she was alone with her son, all her secret restlessness and anxiety had vanished, and she remarked almost with glee that her husband had telephoned from the golf links to say that he would not be back for lunch; then, remembering that Michael had gone to talk to his father after breakfast, she asked him about the interview.
Michael had already made up his mind as to what to say here.

Knowing that his father was anxious about her, he felt it highly unlikely that he would tell her anything to distress her, and so he represented the interview as having gone off in perfect amity.

Later in the day, on his father's return, he had made up his mind to propose a truce between them, as far as his mother was concerned.

Whether that would be accepted or not he could not certainly tell, but in the interval there was nothing to be gained by grieving her.
A great weight was lifted off her mind.
"Ah, my dear, that is good," she said.