ld him nothing; and now that he had seen him, he was at rest; he was
all that he had hoped--straight, strong, manly, with that clear steady
look in the eyes that meant so much; yes, there was no doubt about his
son. He remembered Robin's mother with affectionate tenderness; she
had been the daughter of a doctor in Auckland--he had fallen in love
with her at once and married her, although his prospects had been so
bad. They had been very happy, and then, when Robin was two years old,
she had died; the boy had been sent home, and he had been alone
again--for eighteen years he had been alone. There had been other
women, of course; he did not pretend to have been a saint, and women
had liked him and been rather sorry for him in those early years; but
they had none of them been very much to him, only episodes--the central
fact of his existence had always been his son. He had had a friend
there, a Colonel Durand, who had three sons of his own, and had given
him much advice as to his treatment of Robin. He had talked a great
deal about the young generation, about its impatience of older theories
and manners, its dislike of authority and restraint; and Harry,
remembering his own early hatred of restriction and longing for
freedom, was determined that he would be no fetter on his son's
liberty, that he would be to him a friend, a companion rather than a
father. After all, he felt no more than twenty-five--there was really
no space of years between them--he was as young to-day as he had been
twenty years ago.

As to the others, he had never cared very much for Clare and Garrett in
the old days; they had been stiff, cold, lacking all sense of family
affection. But that had been twenty years ago. There had been a time,
in New Zealand, when he had hated Garrett. When he had been away from
home for some ten years, the longing to see his boy had grown too
strong to be resisted, and he had written to his father asking for
permission to return. He had received a cold answer from Garrett,
saying that Sir Jeremy thought that, as he was so successful there, it
would be perhaps better if he remained there a little while longer;
that he would find little to do at home and would only weary of the
monotony--four closely written pages to the same effect. So Harry had
remained.

But that was ten years ago. At last, a letter had come, saying that
Sir Jeremy was now very old and feeble, that he desired to see his son
before he died,