ed in the growing manliness of his
face and bearing the signs of things and forces ancestral, of those
ghostly hands stretching from the past that in a long settled society
tend to push a man into his right place and keep him there. The Barnes
family was tolerable, though not distinguished. Roger's father's great
temporary success in politics and business had given it a passing
splendour, now quenched in the tides of failure and disaster which had
finally overwhelmed his career. Roger evidently did not want to think
much about his Barnes heritage. But it was clear also that he was proud
of the Trescoes; that he had fallen back upon them, so to speak. Since
the fifteenth century there had always been a Trescoe at Heston; and
Roger had already taken to browsing in county histories and sorting
family letters. French foresaw a double-barrelled surname before
long--perhaps, just in time for the advent of the future son and heir
who was already a personage in the mind, if not yet positively expected.

"My dear fellow, I hope Mrs. Barnes will give you not one son, but
many!" he said, in answer to his companion's outburst. "They're wanted
nowadays."

Roger nodded and smiled, and then passed on to discussion of county
business and county people. He had already, it seemed, informed himself
to a rather surprising degree. The shrewd, upright county gentleman was
beginning to emerge, oddly, from the Apollo. The merits and absurdities
of the type were already there, indeed, _in posse_. How persistent was
the type, and the instinct! A man of Roger's antecedents might seem to
swerve from the course; but the smallest favourable variation of
circumstances, and there he was again on the track, trotting happily
between the shafts.

"If only the wife plays up!" thought French.

The recollection of Daphne, indeed, emerged simultaneously in both
minds.

"Daphne, you know, won't be able to stand this all the year round," said
Roger. "By George, no! not with a wagon-load of Leliuses!" Then, with a
sudden veer and a flush: "I say, French, do you know what sort of state
the Fairmile marriage is in by now? I think that lady might have spared
her call--don't you?"

French kept his eyes on the path. It was the first time, as far as he
was concerned, that Roger had referred to the incident. Yet the tone of
the questioner implied a past history. It was to him, indeed, that Roger
had come, in the first bitterness of his young grief and anger, af