end of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading
topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one,
carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety
and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this
indignity but from the experiment in rationalism that had provoked it.

Because Benham made it perfectly clear what he had thought and felt
about this hat.

Such was the illuminating young man whom Lady Marayne decided to invite
to Chexington, into the neighbourhood of herself, Sir Godfrey, and her
circle of friends.

7

He was quite anxious to satisfy the requirements of Benham's people and
to do his friend credit. He was still in the phase of being a penitent
pig, and he inquired carefully into the needs and duties of a summer
guest in a country house. He knew it was quite a considerable country
house, and that Sir Godfrey wasn't Benham's father, but like most
people, he was persuaded that Lady Marayne had divorced the parental
Benham. He arrived dressed very neatly in a brown suit that had only one
fault, it had not the remotest suggestion of having been made for him.
It fitted his body fairly well, it did annex his body with only a few
slight incompatibilities, but it repudiated his hands and face. He had
a conspicuously old Gladstone bag and a conspicuously new despatch case,
and he had forgotten black ties and dress socks and a hair brush. He
arrived in the late afternoon, was met by Benham, in tennis flannels,
looking smartened up and a little unfamiliar, and taken off in a
spirited dog-cart driven by a typical groom. He met his host and hostess
at dinner.

Sir Godfrey was a rationalist and a residuum. Very much of him, too much
perhaps, had gone into the acquirement and perfect performance of the
caecal operation; the man one met in the social world was what was
left over. It had the effect of being quiet, but in its unobtrusive way
knobby. He had a knobby brow, with an air about it of having recently
been intent, and his conversation was curiously spotted with little
knobby arrested anecdotes. If any one of any distinction was named, he
would reflect and say, "Of course,--ah, yes, I know him, I know him.
Yes, I did him a little service--in '96."

And something in his manner would suggest a satisfaction, or a
dissatisfaction with confidential mysteries.

He welcomed Billy Prothero in a colourless manner, and made conversation
about Cambridge. He h