most in silence. He was a
delicately built, distinguished-looking man, who carried a large
scar on his forehead, and had lost a finger of the left hand. The
ribbons on his breast showed that he was both an M.C. and a
D.S.O.--distinctions won at the second battle of Ypres and on the
Somme. While the twins talked, his eyes travelled from one to the
other, attentive, but curiously aloof.

He was saying to himself that Pamela was extremely pretty, and
Desmond a splendid fellow. Then--in a moment--while he looked at his
young brother, a vision, insistent, terrible, passed ghost-like
between him and the boy. Again and again he tried to shake it off,
and again and again it interposed.

'Oh, Aubrey, what will you do?' said Pamela despairingly, leaning
her head against her brother's knee.

Her voice recalled him. He laid his hand upon her beautiful hair.

'Well, dear, there's only one thing, of course, for me to do--to
stick to Beryl and let father do his worst.'

'Hurrah!' said Desmond. 'That's all right. And of course you know,
Aubrey, that if father tries any hankey-pankey with the estate, and
leaves it to me, I shall give it back to you next day.'

Aubrey smiled. 'Father'll live another twenty years, old man. Will
there be any England then, or any law, or any estates to leave?'

The twins looked at him in amazement. Again he recovered himself
quickly.

'I only meant that, in times like these, it's no good planning
anything twenty years ahead. We've got to win the war, haven't
we?--that's the first thing. Well, now, I must go and clean up.
Who's here?'

'Alice and Margaret,' said Pamela. 'And father's new secretary.'

'You never told me about him,' said Aubrey indifferently, as he
rose.

'"Him" indeed!' laughed Desmond. 'Nothing of the sort!'

Aubrey turned a puzzled look upon him.

'What! a lady?'

Desmond grinned.

'First Class in Mods, and an awful swell. Father can't let her out
of his sight. Says he never had anybody so good.'

'And she'll end by bossing us all,' put in Pamela. 'She's begun it
already. Now you really must go and dress.'

* * * * *

When the eldest son of the house entered the drawing-room, he found
everybody gathered there but his father and the Rector, who was
coming to dine. He was at once seized on by his married sisters, who
saw him very rarely. Then Pamela led him up to a tall lady in pale
blue.

'My eldest brother--Miss Bremerton.'

He loo