not
believe that Randal would have failed. Randal would not have worried
about it for a moment. What, then, was precisely the difference? He
had acted throughout according to the old set formula--he had applied
all the rules of the game as he had learnt them, and nevertheless he
had been beaten. And so there had crept over him gradually, slowly,
and at last overwhelmingly, the knowledge that the world that he had
imagined was not the world as it is, that the people he had admired
were not the only admirable people in it, and that the laws that had
governed him were only a small fragment of the laws that rule the world.

When this discovery first comes to a man the effect is deadening; like
a ship that has lost its bearings he plunges in a sea of entangled,
confused ideas with no assurances as to his own ability to reach any
safe port whatever. It is this crisis that marks the change from youth
to manhood.

Three weeks ago Robin had been absolutely confident, not only in
himself, but in his relations, his House and his future; now he trusted
in nothing. But he had not yet arrived at the point when he could
regard his own shortcomings as the cause of his unhappiness; he pointed
to circumstances, his aunt, his uncle, Dahlia, even Randal, and he
began a search for something more reliable.

Of course, his aunt and uncle might have solved the problem for him; he
had not dared to question them and they had never mentioned the subject
themselves, but they did not look as though they had succeeded--he
fancied that they had avoided him during the last few days.

The serious illness of his grandfather still further complicated
matters; he was not expected to live through the week. Robin was
sorry, but he had never seen very much of his grandfather; and it was,
after all, only fitting that such a very old man should die some time;
no, the point really was that his father would in a week's time be Sir
Henry Trojan and head of the House--that was what mattered.

Now his father was the one person whom he could find no excuse whatever
for blaming. He had stood entirely outside the affair from the
beginning, and, as far as Robin could tell, knew nothing whatever about
it. Robin, indeed, had taken care that he should not interfere; he had
been kept outside from the first.

No, Robin could not blame his father for the state of things; perhaps,
even, it might have been better if his advice had been asked.

But everything d