rmed truce. He had, in spite of himself, admired his
father's conduct during the last three days, and he was surprised to
find that it was his aunt and uncle rather than his father who had
failed to carry off the situation. He refused as yet to admit it to
himself, but the three of them, his aunt, his uncle, and himself, had
seemed almost frightened. His father was another person; stern, cold,
unfailingly polite, suddenly apparently possessed of those little
courtesies in which he had seemed before so singularly lacking. There
had been conversation of a kind at meals, and it had always been his
father who had filled awkward pauses and avoided difficult moments.
The knowledge, too, that his father would, in a few months' time, be
head of the house, was borne in upon him with new force; it might be
unpleasant, but it would not, as he had formerly fancied, be ludicrous.
A sign of his changed attitude was the fact that he rather resented
Randal's letter and wished a little that he had not taken him into his
confidence.

Nevertheless, to ask advice of his father was impossible. He must
speak to his uncle and aunt. How hard this would be only he himself
knew. He had never in their eyes failed, in any degree, towards the
family honour. From whatever side the House might be attacked, it
would not be through him. There was nothing in his past life, they
thought, at which they would not care to look.

He realised, too, Clare's love for him. He had known from very early
days that he counted for everything in her life; that her faith in the
family centred in his own honour and that her hopes for the family were
founded completely in his own progress--and now he must tell her this.

He could not, he knew, have chosen a more unfortunate time. The House
had already been threatened by the conduct of the father; it was now to
totter under blows dealt by the son. The first crisis had been severe,
this would be infinitely more so. He hated himself for the first time
in his life, and, in doing so, began for the first time to realise
himself a little.

Well, he must speak to them and ask them what was to be done, and the
sooner it was over the better. He put the Beddoes back into the shelf,
and went to the windows. It was already dark; light twinkled in the
bay, and a line of white breakers flashed and vanished, keeping time,
it seemed, with the changing gleam of the lighthouse far out to sea.
His own room was dark, save