within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon
found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral
intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it
seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should
be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless. And indeed,
how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love
had failed so signally? Even so, she would not own herself beaten. It
was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked
him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him.

The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble. He had told her the truth
when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack
of honour in games. Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when
the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident
as on principle, they began to treat him as an outcast from their
decent society. The Traceys went so far as to report his failing to
Considine. An unpleasant _contretemps_, but one that Considine had
expected. He explained to them that Payne was not entirely to blame,
and that his constitution was not normal. He advised them to take the
weakness for granted. Even when he did this he knew that such
distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish code of honour.
On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were
essential to the development of his plans. As a compromise he decided
to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most
natural way he could devise. Practically for want of a better solution
he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle.

Arthur resented this. He was fond of games and of sport. He liked
winning and he liked killing; he thought it humiliating to his manly
dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society. He wrote bitterly to
his mother about it, using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had
invented for Mrs. Considine.

"_I think old Considine,_" he wrote, "_must be thinking of turning me
into a nursemaid. I'm always being told off to help Gaby in the garden
or take her for drives in the pony-cart. Not much fun taking a woman
shopping!_"

But Gabrielle was glad of it. The new plan supplied her with the first
prolonged companionship of a person of her own age--there were less
than three years between them--that she had known. Little by little
Arthur accepted it,