He whistled, and soon his brother joined him, with flushed face and indignant eyes.

"You perfect ass," said Alec. "I've been waiting about to get in and finish my breakfast, but you and he would keep on jabbering. 'Don't want to go now, though. Sick of waiting."

"I can't help it. You will do these things. You ought to know by now that it isn't behaving like a gentleman to neigh like a mare."

"Oh, shut up. You can't make me laugh now. You might be as funny as you could stick together, and it wouldn't make me laugh. Just because it wouldn't matter if I did, I suppose. How damn silly!

What did he say?" They walked down towards the garage.

"Oh, the usual gag. Business about bein' a blasted Glaive. And you're to keep up the honour of the family, after this, by not takin' any notice of girls and always talkin' proper. Dear old dad isn't sure if he'll get enough cash out of Williams to make it worth while, but if he can annoy the chap badly, he may bring action anyhow. I'm against it. It'd be a horrid nuisance, particularly while I'm up at Oxford. Don't think the old bird'll do it, but he'd make himself damn uncomfortable, so's to hit Williams."

"You seem cheerful enough. I don't half like it. Why, it's the sort of thing that hardly ever happens. We shall both look awful fools-"

"Oh, what's the odds? You ought to have been a few years older. After you've been mixed up in that

mess, all you want is to live an' have a good time, an' never see a uniform. I shan't ever give or take a salute again, that's enough for me. War's over. What's the odds?-Wake up in a bed, have a bath and be a civilian. You don't think anything of a little thing like this. She isn't our mother, either. And anyhow nothing's worth fussing over. 'Pity Williams is such an ass, though."

Alec, puzzled, scrutinized his brother. He did not at all understand how deeply, yet how lightly and amiably, Mervyn was disillusioned. "I see the Rat's come," he said.

"Yes; with the old man in the Study now. got to drive over to Bloyce's."

I've

"Auntie's guzzling in her room. She got Moggridge to send her breakfast up.'

"Course she did. Any one could see she was really as hungry as a whale. 'Wish she'd eloped instead of the Mater. I hate Aunt Cathy worst of all my aunts, but I s'pose that's only because she lives with us. If I wasn't as lazy as a tortoise I'd clear out and get something to do in London. 'Don't fancy trottin' round seein' after the Rat's tenants all my life just like the guv'nor. But, Lord, what's the odds? Comin' along?"

"No, don't think so."

"Well, don't go messin' about with Frippie. She's a rotter, anyhow. Some fellow's gone and bitten her chin already."

Mervyn sauntered off. Alec's face grew grave and troubled. He walked away, over the lawn,

through the gate that led into the field-a youth somewhat over-tall, with an undisciplined figure. Girls who liked him thought of his eyes, which were of a very dark brown-impressionable eyes, and large; contrasting startlingly with his russet hair that had enough light of gold in it for him to have been called "Carrots" at school. A less hackneyed nickname was "Autumn Tints." His face was long, and highcoloured he blushed very easily, to a tormentingly vivid scarlet. His round chin hinted weakness of will, but this suggestion was modified, at least, by a certain grimness and almost bitterness often showing in the close lines of his mouth-a small mouth, though with full enough lips. He baffled prediction, so evidently exposed as he was, so susceptible to change, so ready for any one of a score of diverse moulds. But "volatile" was not the word to touch him: his surrender to influence would be too seriously made, with too much energy; and he would colour each influence with himself, subdue it to himself, perhaps. His long legs now took him rapidly over the field towards Father Collett's Vicarage. "You can hardly blame the Mater." Mervyn's careless words had gone deep, Alec struck out from them, and was lost. His mind swam in the first surge of the event, but could not breast eddies nor touch bottom. His stepmother-He tried, wonderingly, to see her. . . .

Mrs. Glaive's adulterous desertion had postponed Aunt Catherine's breakfast-a trifling piece of discomfort for the heartfelt satisfaction she had had in a surprise so stirring: it had set the brain of the

master of the house working keen on nice balances of loss and profit, in the intervals of self-dedication to Christian morality: the settled Mervyn's amiable securities it had sensibly though not too rudely ruffled. In Alec, the sense of the "calamity" began to vex for organic growth.

A

CHAPTER II

LEC crossed the road from the field and struck out skirting the Golf Course. The

flat treeless drained marshland was roughened and brightened by bushes of lively yellow gorse. Their lavish buxom odour assailed him, in blend with the smart-tasting sea air. All this could not help: it could stand anything-any beastly thing that might happen. That impudent excessive shouting gorse! If only he could insult this "Nature," which had become really noticeable to him now for the first time. Alec swished his stick through one of the clumps, scattering the offensive bright stuff. He remembered the Suffolk boy who had been found beating a toad and calling out, between the strokes: "I'll larn yer to be a toad, I'll larn yer!" Perhaps that boy was angry with some one else. But it was not so much that Alec was angry with his father; such mere anger would not, of course, have been unusual for him. His emotion was one of new and highly conscious hatred. He was overpowered by and wondering at this quickening of hatred as a woman is by the quickening of a child: it was a portent of growth, significant, disquieting, uncertain; it was something that would grow not only in itself, but in other parts of him, in very much else. . .

As Alec walked, he did not think at all of his step