ore. Then Betty and her aunts. Last of all, while the troops
were preparing to march away and the crowd was dispersing and all the
excitement was over, Marigold picked me out of my chair and carried me
down to my little grey two-seater.

CHAPTER XXI

Of course, after this (in the words of my young friends) I crocked up.
The confounded shell that had played the fool with my legs had also
done something silly to my heart. Hence these collapses after physical
and emotional strain. I had to stay in bed for some days. Cliffe told
me that as soon as I was fit to travel I must go to Bournemouth, where
it would be warm. I told Cliffe to go to a place where it would be
warmer. As neither of us would obey the other, we remained where we
were.

Cliffe informed me that Lady Fenimore had called him in to see Sir
Anthony, whom she described as being on the obstinate edge of a nervous
breakdown. I was sorry to hear it.

"I suppose you've tried to send him, too, to Bournemouth?"

"I haven't," Cliffe replied gravely. "He has got something on his mind.
I'm sure of it. So is his wife. What's the good of sending him away?"

"What do you think is on his mind?" I asked.

"How do I know? His wife thinks it must be something to do with Boyce's
reception. He went home dead-beat, is very irritable, off his food,
can't sleep, and swears cantankerously that there's nothing the matter
with him,--the usual symptoms. Can you throw any light on it?"

"Certainly not," I replied rather sharply.

Cliffe said "Umph!" in his exasperating professional way and proceeded
to feel my pulse.

"I don't quite see how Friday's mild exertion could account for YOUR
breakdown, my friend," he remarked.

"I'm so glad you confess, at last, not to seeing everything," said I.

I was fearing this physical reaction in Sir Anthony. It was only the
self-assertion of Nature. He had gone splendidly through his ordeal,
having braced himself up for it. He had not braced himself up, however,
sufficiently to go through the other and far longer ordeal of hiding
his secret from his wife. So of course he went to pieces.

After Cliffe had left me, with his desire for information unsatisfied,
I rang up Wellings Park. It was the Sunday morning after the reception.
To my surprise, Sir Anthony answered me; for he was an old-fashioned
country churchgoer and plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder and
sudden death had never been known to keep him out of his accustome