dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn hatred and
dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining nothing, which,
since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce the arbiter of his
land, rose up within his sorely tried soul.

"What on earth's that to do with it?" he cried in a rage. "You women!
You've no sense of anything! Romantic, idiotic, immoral--I don't know
what you're at. For God's sake don't go putting ideas into his head!"

At this outburst Mrs. Pendyce's face became rigid; only the flicker of
her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering. Suddenly she threw
her hands up to her ears.

"Horace!" she cried, "do----Oh, poor John!"

The Squire had stepped hastily and heavily on to his dog's paw. The
creature gave a grievous howl. Mr. Pendyce went down on his knees and
raised the limb.

"Damn the dog!" he stuttered. "Oh, poor fellow, John!"

And the two long and narrow heads for a moment were close together.

CHAPTER V

RECTOR AND SQUIRE

The efforts of social man, directed from immemorial time towards
the stability of things, have culminated in Worsted Skeynes. Beyond
commercial competition--for the estate no longer paid for living on
it--beyond the power of expansion, set with tradition and sentiment, it
was an undoubted jewel, past need of warranty. Cradled within it were
all those hereditary institutions of which the country was most proud,
and Mr. Pendyce sometimes saw before him the time when, for services to
his party, he should call himself Lord Worsted, and after his own death
continue sitting in the House of Lords in the person of his son. But
there was another feeling in the Squire's heart--the air and the woods
and the fields had passed into his blood a love for this, his home and
the home of his fathers.

And so a terrible unrest pervaded the whole household after the receipt
of Jaspar Bellew's note. Nobody was told anything, yet everybody knew
there was something; and each after his fashion, down to the very dogs,
betrayed their sympathy with the master and mistress of the house.

Day after day the girls wandered about the new golf course knocking the
balls aimlessly; it was all they could do. Even Cecil Tharp, who
had received from Bee the qualified affirmative natural under the
circumstances, was infected. The off foreleg of her grey mare was being
treated by a process he had recently discovered, and in the stables he
confided to Bee that th