m began. He took to frequenting the
drawing-room again as of old and, being nowadays allowed to stay up till
a quarter to nine, he used to spend a rosy half-hour after dinner
sitting on a footstool in the firelight by his mother's knee. She used
to stroke his hair and sigh sometimes, when she looked at him.

One afternoon just before term began Mrs. Fane told him to make himself
as tidy as possible, because she wanted to take him out to pay a call.
Michael was excited by this notion, especially when he heard that they
were to travel by hansom, a form of vehicle which he greatly admired.
The hansom bowled along the Kensington Road with Michael in his Eton
suit and top-hat sitting beside his mother scented sweetly with
delicious perfumes and very silky to the touch. They drove past
Kensington Gardens all dripping with January rains, past Hyde Park and
the Albert Memorial, past the barracks of the Household Cavalry, past
Hyde Park Corner and the Duke of Wellington's house. They dashed along
with a jingle and a rattle over the slow old omnibus route, and Michael
felt very much distinguished as he turned round to look at the
melancholy people crammed inside each omnibus they passed. When they
came to Devonshire House, they turned round to the left and pulled up
before a grand house in a square. Michael pressed the bell, and the door
opened immediately, much more quickly than he had ever known a door
open.

"Is his lordship in?" asked Mrs. Fane.

"His lordship is upstairs, ma'am," said the footman.

The hall seemed full of footmen, one of whom took Michael's hat and
another of whom led the way up a wide soft staircase that smelt like the
inside of the South Kensington Museum. All the way up, the walls were
hung with enormous pictures of men in white wigs. Presently they stood
in the largest room Michael had ever entered, a still white room full of
golden furniture. Michael had barely recovered his breath from
astonishment at the size of the room, when he saw another room round the
corner, in which a man was sitting by a great fire. When the footman had
left the room very quietly, this man got up and held Mrs. Fane's hand
for nearly a minute. Then he looked at Michael, curiously, Michael
thought, so curiously as to make him blush.

"And this is the boy?" the gentleman asked.

Michael thought his mother spoke very funnily, as if she were just going
to cry, when she answered:

"Yes, this is Michael."

"My God, Valerie,