or later, and he was not sorry that it had happened sooner than he
expected or intended. Sylvia so held sway in him that he could not help
acknowledging her. His announcement had broken from him irresistibly,
in spite of his mother's whispered word to him last night, "This is our
secret." It could not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . .
And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his
father disliked him. Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been
responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken
heart?" Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly
ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have been
conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him.
That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew
well, but never before had it been quite plainly shown him how essential
an object of dislike he was. And the grounds of the dislike were now
equally plain--his father disliked him exactly because he was his
father. On the other hand, the last twenty-four hours had shown him that
his mother loved him exactly because he was her son. When these two new
and undeniable facts were put side by side, Michael felt that he was an
infinite gainer.

He went rather drearily to the window. Far off across the field below
the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along on his way
to the links, with his head held high, his stick swinging in his
hand, his two retrievers at his heels. No doubt already the soothing
influences of Nature were at work--Nature, of course, standing for the
portion of trees and earth and houses that belonged to him--and were
expunging the depressing reflection that his wife and only son inspired
in him. And, indeed, such was actually the case: Lord Ashbridge, in his
amazing fatuity, could not long continue being himself without being
cheered and invigorated by that fact, and though when he set out his
big white hands were positively trembling with passion, he carried
his balsam always with him. But he had registered to himself, even
as Michael had registered, the fact that he found his son a most
intolerable person. And what vexed him most of all, what made him clang
the gate at the end of the field so violently that it hit one of his
retrievers shrewdly on the nose, was the sense of his own impotence. He
knew perfectly well that in point of view of determination (that qualit