ll sunlight--the modelling of his young limbs
veiled, yet not hidden, by his silk night-suit; the carriage of head and
shoulders betraying innate pride of race--he looked, on every count, no
unworthy heir to the House of Sinclair and its simple honourable
traditions: one that might conceivably live to challenge family
prejudices and qualms. The thick dark hair, ruffled from sleep, was his
mother's; and hers the semi-opaque ivory tint of his skin. The clean-cut
forehead and nose, the blue-grey eyes, with the lurking smile in them,
were Nevil Sinclair's own. In him, at least, it would seem that love was
justified of her children.

But of family features, as of family qualms, he was, as yet, radiantly
unaware. Snatching his towel, he scampered barefoot down the passage to
the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed, but hatless and still barefoot, he was
racing over the vast dew-drenched lawn, leaving a trail of grey-green
smudges on its silvered surface, chanting the opening lines of Shelley's
'Cloud' to breakfast-hunting birds.

CHAPTER II.

"Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,...
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing."
--WORDSWORTH.

The blue rug under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of
sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind
kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves
flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious
fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over,
and all the leaf butterflies in the world would be free to scamper with
the wind.

That was Roy's foolish fancy as he lay full length, to the obvious
detriment of his moral backbone--chin cupped in the hollow of his hands.
Close beside him lay Prince, his golden retriever; so close that he
could feel the dog's warm body through his thin shirt. At the foot of
the tree, in a nest of pale cushions, sat his mother, in her
apple-blossom sari and a silk dress like the lining of a shell. No
jewels in the morning, except the star that fastened her sari on one
shoulder and a slender gold bangle--never removed--the wedding-ring of
her own land. The boy, mutely adoring, could, in some dim way, feel the
harmony of those pale tones with the olive skin, faintly aglow, a