ep
background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast.
Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged;
his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of
vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful
in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce.
Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of
something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a
capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the
endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was
the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting,
beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.

II

The noise and movement of an outer world seemed to break in upon the
recorded vision of arrested life.

The door opened, a quick, decisive step approached down the hall, and,
closely following the announcing maid, Mrs. Grey, the local squiress,
entered the room. In the normal run of rural conventions, Lady Channice
should have held the place; but Charlock House no longer stood for what
it had used to stand in the days of Sir Hugh Channice's forbears. Mrs.
Grey, of Pangley Hall, had never held any but the first place and a
consciousness of this fact seemed to radiate from her competent
personality. She was a vast middle-aged woman clad in tweed and leather,
but her abundance of firm, hard flesh could lend itself to the roughest
exigences of a sporting outdoor life. Her broad face shone like a ripe
apple, and her sharp eyes, her tight lips, the cheerful creases of her
face, expressed an observant and rather tyrannous good-temper.

"Tea? No, thanks; no tea for me," she almost shouted; "I've just had tea
with Mrs. Grier. How are you, Lady Channice? and you, Augustine? What a
man you are getting to be; a good inch taller than my Tom. Reading as
usual, I see. I can't get my boys to look at a book in vacation time.
What's the book? Ah, fuddling your brains with that stuff, still, are
you? Still determined to be a philosopher? Do you really want him to be
a philosopher, my dear?"

"Indeed I think it would be very nice if he could be a philosopher,"
said Lady Channice, smiling, for though she had often to evade Mrs.
Grey's tyranny she liked her good temper. She seemed in her reply to
float, lightly and almost gaily above Mrs. Grey, and away from her.