rom her fierceness.

"Poff, my little son," she said, "I'm so sorry I hardly know how to tell
you. Poff, I'm sorry. I have to tell you--and it's utterly beastly."

"But what?" he asked.

"These people are dreadful people."

"But how?"

"You've heard of the great Kent and Eastern Bank smash and the
Marlborough Building Society frauds eight or nine years ago?"

"Vaguely. But what has that to do with them?"

"That man Morris."

She stopped short, and Benham nodded for her to go on.

"Her father," said Lady Marayne.

"But who was Morris? Really, mother, I don't remember."

"He was sentenced to seven years--ten years--I forget. He had done all
sorts of dreadful things. He was a swindler. And when he went out of the
dock into the waiting-room-- He had a signet ring with prussic acid in
it--..."

"I remember now," he said.

A silence fell between them.

Benham stood quite motionless on the hearthrug and stared very hard at
the little volume of Henley's poetry that lay upon the table.

He cleared his throat presently.

"You can't go and see them then," he said. "After all--since I am going
abroad so soon--... It doesn't so very much matter."

10

To Benham it did not seem to be of the slightest importance that
Amanda's father was a convicted swindler who had committed suicide.
Never was a resolved and conscious aristocrat so free from the
hereditary delusion. Good parents, he was convinced, are only an
advantage in so far as they have made you good stuff, and bad parents
are no discredit to a son or daughter of good quality. Conceivably he
had a bias against too close an examination of origins, and he held that
the honour of the children should atone for the sins of the fathers and
the questionable achievements of any intervening testator. Not half a
dozen rich and established families in all England could stand even the
most conventional inquiry into the foundations of their pride, and
only a universal amnesty could prevent ridiculous distinctions. But he
brought no accusation of inconsistency against his mother. She looked at
things with a lighter logic and a kind of genius for the acceptance
of superficial values. She was condoned and forgiven, a rescued lamb,
re-established, notoriously bright and nice, and the Morrises were
damned. That was their status, exclusion, damnation, as fixed as colour
in Georgia or caste in Bengal. But if his mother's mind worked in that
way there was no reason why h