freedom, he was
sure he regretted none of them in the presence of this sedate house
looking over the sun-flamed river and the crenated line of the long
Battersea shore.

Michael was waiting for Mrs. Fane, who as usual was late. Mr. Prescott
was to be there to give his approval and advice, and Michael was anxious
to meet this man who had evidently been a very intimate friend of his
father. He saw Prescott in his mind as he had seen him years ago, an
intruder upon the time-shrouded woes of childhood, and as he was trying
to reconstruct the image of a florid jovial man, whose only definite
impression had been made by the gold piece he had pressed into Michael's
palm, a hansom pulled up at the house and someone, fair and angular with
a military awkwardness, alighting from it, knocked at the door. Michael
crossed the road quickly and asked if he were Mr. Prescott. Himself
explained who he was and, opening the front door, led the way into the
empty house. He was conscious, as he showed room after room to Prescott,
that the visitor was somehow occupied less with the observation of the
house than with a desire to achieve in regard to Michael himself a
tentative advance toward intimacy. The January sun that sloped thin
golden ladders across the echoing spaces of the bare rooms expressed for
Michael something of the sensation which Prescott's attitude conveyed to
him, the sensation of a benign and delicate warmth that could most
easily melt away, stretching out toward certain unused depths of his
heart.

"I suppose you knew my father very well," said Michael at last, blushing
as he spoke at the uninspired obviousness of the remark.

"About as well as anybody," said Prescott nervously. "Like to talk to
you about him some time. Better come to dinner. Live in Albany. Have a
soldier-servant and all that, you know. Must talk sometimes. Important
you should know just how your affairs stand. Suppose I'm almost what you
might call your guardian. Of course your mother's a dear woman. Known
her for years. Always splendid to me. But she mustn't get too
charitable."

"Do you mean to people's failings?" Michael asked.

Michael did not ask this so much because he believed that was what
Prescott really meant as because he wished to encourage him to speak out
clearly at once so that, when later they met again, the hard shyness of
preliminary encounters would have been softened. Moreover, this empty
house glinting with golden motes seemed t