made him feel like a
blind man groping in a strange place, or worse, like a bull in a
china-shop. He was prepared enough to find differences in the American
and English points of view. But this thing that baffled him did not seem
to have to do with that; it was something deeper, something very
definite, he was sure--and yet, what was it? The worst of it was that he
had a curious feeling as if they were all--that is, Lady Sherwood and
Gerald; not Sir Charles so much--protecting him from himself--keeping
him from making breaks, as he phrased it. That hurt and annoyed him, and
piqued his vanity. Was he a social blunderer, and weren't a Virginia
gentleman's manners to be trusted in England without leading-strings?
He had been at the Front for several months with the Royal Flying
Corps, and when his leave came, his Flight Commander, Captain Cheviot
Sherwood, discovering that he meant to spend it in England, where he
hardly knew a soul, had said his people down in Devonshire would be
jolly glad to have him stop with them; and Skipworth Cary, knowing that,
if the circumstances had been reversed, his people down in Virginia
would indeed have been jolly glad to entertain Captain Sherwood, had
accepted unhesitatingly. The invitation had been seconded by a letter
from Lady Sherwood,--Chev's mother,--and after a few days sight-seeing
in London, he had come down to Bishopsthorpe, very eager to know his
friend's family, feeling as he did about Chev himself. "He's the finest
man that ever went up in the air," he had written home; and to his own
family's disgust, his letters had been far more full of Chev Sherwood
than they had been of Skipworth Cary.

And now here he was, and he almost wished himself away--wished almost
that he was back again at the Front, carrying on under Chev. There, at
least, you knew what you were up against. The job might be hard enough,
but it wasn't baffling and queer, with hidden undercurrents that you
couldn't chart. It seemed to him that this baffling feeling of
constraint had rushed to meet him on the very threshold of the
drawing-room, when he made his first appearance.

As he entered, he had a sudden sensation that they had been awaiting him
in a strained expectancy, and that, as he appeared, they adjusted unseen
masks and began to play-act at something. "But English people don't
play-act very well," he commented to himself, reviewing the scene
afterward.

Lady Sherwood had come forward and greeted hi