stroke once, and fever several times. In the perfect precision of his
collar, his boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time
he cleared his throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face
between his carefully brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white
hands on his cane, he gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a
system. Only his eyes, restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential
Pendyce that was behind.

He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram. It
worried him. There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed
to pay calls in the morning. He found his sister-in-law seated at an
open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright.
She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern
what was not put under his nose. Fortunately for him, that had never
been his practice.

"How are you, Margery?" he said. "Glad to see you in town. How's Horace?
Look here what he's sent me!" He offered her the telegram, with the air
of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as though he
had just thought of it: "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry
for the sender.

"Nothing, thanks, dear Charles," she said slowly. "I'm all right. Horace
gets so nervous!"

General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then,
since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his
philosophy, he accepted her statement.

"He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this," he said. "You might have
been ill for all I could tell. It spoiled my breakfast!" For though, as
a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied
that he felt hungry. "When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow
who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He
commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles? If Horace
is going to take to this sort of thing he'd better see a specialist;
it's almost certain to mean a breakdown. You're up about dresses, I see.
When do you come to town? The season's getting on."

Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though
punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly
a man to inspire awe in his social equals. It was, therefore, not
through fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an
instinct for avoiding all unnecessary