is tailor's at once and have
his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him.
But he could feel that she was very much upset. It was on his lips to
console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of
that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that
his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him. He felt
aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him. When Imogen had gone
to bed, he risked the emotional.

"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."

"Well, I must make the best of it. We must try and get you a commission
as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so. Do you know any
drill, Val?"

"Not a scrap."

"I hope they won't worry you much. I must take you about to get the
things to-morrow. Good-night; kiss me."

With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I hope
they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette,
before a dying fire. The heat was out of him--the glow of cutting a
dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. 'I'll be even with that
chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his
mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was
trying to make her sob.

And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
bedroom above his father's.

So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there? Hanging
round Irene! The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be
something soon. Could it be this? That fellow, with his beard and his
cursed amused way of speaking--son of the old man who had given him the
nickname 'Man of Property,' and bought the fatal house from him. Soames
had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never
forgiven his uncle for having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.

Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across the
Park. Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of traffic; a frost
coming; bare trees; a star or two. 'I'll see Polteed to-morrow,' he
thought. 'By God! I'm mad, I think, to want her still. That fellow!
If...? Um! No!'

CHAPTER X

DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR

Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin Hill on
Sunday morning. He had sent no word beforehand, so walked up from the
station, entering his domain by the coppice gate. Coming to the log seat
fashioned