ned to Overton and announced the
arrangements she had made to Arthur. He took to them gladly. He was
tired of the unnatural indolence of Overton, and in any case he would
have welcomed a change. In everything but his fatal abnormality he was
an ordinary healthy boy, and the prospect of going into a new county,
and learning something of estate management, a subject in which he was
really interested, appealed to him. She described the drive from the
station, the house, and the general conditions in detail. Her
enthusiasm for Considine rather put him off.

"I hope he isn't quite such a paragon as you make out," he said, "or
he'll have no use for me."

Gabrielle appeared as a rather shadowy figure in his mother's
background. "Oh, there's a wife, is there?" he said. "That's rather a
pity." She smiled, for this was typical of his attitude towards women.

Even though she smiled at it her heart was full of thankfulness, for,
as he had grown older, she had lived in an indefinite terror of what
might happen when Arthur did begin to notice women. It was quite bad
enough that he should be without a conscience in matters of truth and
property; if he were to be found without conscience in matters of sex
there was no end to the complications with which she might have to
deal. She always remembered the specialist's prophecy that the period
of puberty might be marked by a complete change for the better in his
dangerous temperament, but she was secretly haunted by a fear that this
critical age might, by an equal chance, reveal some new abnormality or
even aggravate the old. Arthur was now nearly seventeen, and
physically, at any rate, mature. For the present she lived in a state
of exaggerated hopes and fears.

The amazing part of the whole business was that Arthur didn't realise
it. He looked upon the anxiety which Mrs. Payne found it so difficult
to conceal as feminine weakness. He wished to goodness that she
wouldn't fuss over him, being convinced that he himself was an
ordinary, plain-sailing person who had submitted for long enough to an
unreasonable degree of pampering. He didn't see any reason why he
shouldn't be treated like any other boy of his age, and felt that he
had already been cheated of many of the rights of youth. One of the
principal reasons why he welcomed the Lapton plan was that it would
free him from the constant tug of apron-strings, and allow him to mix
freely with creatures of his own age and