action with herself and with her day, and an absurd longing for
the tranquillity and safety of the home whose chief drawback lately had
been that it was too tranquil and too safe. She could almost have told
her mother how they had all gone for her, and how Rosalind had turned
out rotten, and how beastly it had all been. Almost, but not quite.
Dorothy had grown up, and she was there to protect and not to be
protected. However agreeable it might have been to confide in her
mother, it wouldn't have done.

Frances met her at the garden door. She had been crying.

"Nicky's come home," she said.

"Nicky?"

"He's been sent down."

"Whatever for?"

"Darling, I can't possibly tell you."

But in the end she did.

XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. It
had got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs of
the nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and
Angela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped and
prayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. The
spectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's Franchise
Union had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports of
divorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still,
it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's _Times_ ignored it, there
were other papers that Dorothy brought home.

But for Frances the affairs of the nation sank into insignificance
beside Nicky's Cambridge affair.

There could be no doubt that Nicky's affair was serious. You could not,
Anthony said, get over the letters, the Master's letter and the
Professor's letter and Michael's. They had arrived one hour after Nicky,
Nicky so changed from his former candour that he refused to give any
account of himself beyond the simple statement that he had been sent
down. They'd know, he had said, soon enough why.

And soon enough they did know.

To be sure no details could be disentangled from the discreet
ambiguities of the Master and the Professor. But Michael's letter was
more explicit. Nicky had been sent down because old "Booster" had got
it into his head that Nicky had been making love to "Booster's" wife
when she didn't want to be made love to, and nothing could get it out of
"Booster's" head.

Michael was bound to stand up for his brother, and it was clear to
Anthony that so grave a charge could hardly have been brought without
some reason. Th