t
the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting together, and turned at
right angles and went into the house. Almost immediately a footman
came out with a long dog-lead and advanced hesitatingly to Og. Og was
convinced that he had come to play with him, and crouched and growled
and retreated and advanced with engaging affability. Out of the windows
of the library looked Lord Ashbridge's baleful face. . . . Aunt
Barbara swayed out of her chair, and laid a trembling hand on Michael's
shoulder.

"I shall go and apologise for Og," she said. "I shall do it quite
sincerely, my dear. But there are points."

CHAPTER IV

Michael practised a certain mature and rather elderly precision in the
ordinary affairs of daily life. His habits were almost unduly tidy and
punctual; he answered letters by return of post, he never mislaid things
nor tore up documents which he particularly desired should be preserved;
he kept his gold in a purse and his change in a trousers-pocket, and in
matters of travelling he always arrived at stations with plenty of time
to spare, and had such creature comforts as he desired for his journey
in a neat Gladstone bag above his head. He never travelled first-class,
for the very simple and adequate reason that, though very well off,
he preferred to spend his money in ways that were more productive of
usefulness or pleasure; and thus, when he took his place in the corner
of a second-class compartment of the Dover-Ostend express on the
Wednesday morning following, he was the only occupant of it.

Probably he had never felt so fully at liberty, nor enjoyed a keener
zest for life and the future. For the first time he had asserted his own
indisputable right to stand on his own feet, and though he was genuinely
sorry for his father's chagrin at not being able to tuck him up in
the family coach, his own sense of independence could not but wave its
banners. There had been a second interview, no less fruitless than the
first, and Lord Ashbridge had told him that when next his presence was
desired at home, he would be informed of the fact. His mother had cried
in a mild, trickling fashion, but it was quite obvious that in her
heart of hearts she was more concerned with a bilious attack of peculiar
intensity that had assailed Petsy. She wished Michael would not be so
disobedient and vex his father, but she was quite sure that before
long some formula, in diplomatic phrase, would be found on which
reconciliati