h, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, of
independent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of his
days in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from his
first holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhat
tedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father had
appointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealous
affection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it had
been returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which had
gradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, as
it seemed indissolubly. No one had come between them. Once or twice
Wentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for his
tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys,
and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of
these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case,
judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he
had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was
Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's
boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come about
during the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which was
within a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent many
weeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone had
expected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soon
afterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated many
years back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his first
painful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because he
instinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partly
also because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had never
taken the shape of relief.

There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion to
Michael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in his
somewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in other
directions, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. He
had not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that we
should love very deeply those who have had the power to release us
momentarily from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it is
a child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth