o promise. I
think such a promise bears hardly on the general. There is nothing in
the world which could pain him so much as the proof that his son was a
coward. Harry might have robbed and murdered. The old man would have
preferred him to have committed both these crimes. I shall cross into
Surrey this morning and tell him that Harry never was a coward."

Sutch shook his head.

"He will not be able to understand. He will be very grateful to you, of
course. He will be very glad that Harry has atoned his disgrace, but he
will never understand why he incurred it. And, after all, he will only
be glad because the family honour is restored."

"I don't agree," said Durrance. "I believe the old man is rather fond of
his son, though to be sure he would never admit it. I rather like
General Feversham."

Lieutenant Sutch had seen very little of General Feversham during the
last five years. He could not forgive him for his share in the
responsibility of Harry Feversham's ruin. Had the general been capable
of sympathy with and comprehension of the boy's nature, the white
feathers would never have been sent to Ramelton. Sutch pictured the old
man sitting sternly on his terrace at Broad Place, quite unaware that he
was himself at all to blame, and on the contrary, rather inclined to
pose as a martyr, in that his son had turned out a shame and disgrace to
all the dead Fevershams whose portraits hung darkly on the high walls of
the hall. Sutch felt that he could never endure to talk patiently with
General Feversham, and he was sure that no argument would turn that
stubborn man from his convictions. He had not troubled at all to
consider whether the news which Durrance had brought should be handed on
to Broad Place.

"You are very thoughtful for others," he said to Durrance.

"It's not to my credit. I practise thoughtfulness for others out of an
instinct of self-preservation, that's all," said Durrance. "Selfishness
is the natural and encroaching fault of the blind. I know that, so I am
careful to guard against it."

He travelled accordingly that morning by branch lines from Hampshire
into Surrey, and came to Broad Place in the glow of the afternoon.
General Feversham was now within a few months of his eightieth year, and
though his back was as stiff and his figure as erect as on that night
now so many years ago when he first presented Harry to his Crimean
friends, he was shrunken in stature, and his face seemed to have grown
s