_ shirked a disagreeable obligation. It may
safely be added that no one ever did!

Nevil--who would have given a good deal to be elsewhere--awaited her in
the library: and at the first shock of their encountering glances, he
stiffened all through. He was apt to be restive under advice, and
rebellious under dictation; facts none knew better than Jane, who throve
on advice and dictation--given, not received! She still affected the
neat hard coat and skirt and the neat hard summer hat that had so
distressed the awakening beauty-sense of nine-year-old Roy: only, in
place of the fierce wing there uprose in majesty a severely wired bow.
Jane was so unvarying, outside and in; a worse failing, almost, in the
eyes of this hopelessly artistic household, than her talent for
pouncing, or advising or making up other people's minds.

But to-day, as she glanced round the familiar room, her sigh--half
anger, half bitterness of heart--was genuine. She did care intensely, in
her own way, for the brother whom she hectored without mercy. And he
too cared--in his own way--more than he chose to reveal. But their love
was a dumb thing, rooted in ancestral mysteries. Their surface clash of
temperament was more loquacious.

"I suppose we're fairly safe from interruption?" she asked, with ominous
emphasis; and Nevil gravely indicated the largest leather chair.

"I believe the others are out," he said, half sitting on the edge of the
writing-table and proceeding to light a cigarette. "But, upon my soul, I
don't know _why_ you put yourself out to come down all this way when I
told you plainly everything was fixed up."

"You thought I'd swallow that--and keep my mouth shut?" she retorted,
bristling visibly. "_I'm_ no fool, Nevil, if _you_ are. I _told_ you how
it would be, when you went out in '99. You wouldn't listen then. Perhaps
you'll at least have the sense to listen _now_?"

Nevil shrugged. "As you've come all this way for the satisfaction of
airing your views--I've not much choice in the matter."

And the latitude, thus casually given, she took in full measure. For
twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of
vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of
melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in moments of
excitement....

To the familiar tuning-up process, Nevil listened unmoved. But his anger
rose with her rising eloquence:--the unwilling anger of a cool man, more
formidable than mere