ked at her with curiosity, and was glad when, after the
arrival of his father and the Rector, it fell to him to take the new
secretary in to dinner. His father's greeting to him had been
decidedly cool--the greeting of a man who sees a fight impending and
wishes to give away nothing to his opponent. In fact the two men had
never been on really cordial terms since August 1914, when Aubrey
had thrown up his post in the Foreign Office to apply for one of the
first temporary commissions in the New Army. The news came at a
moment when the Squire was smarting under the breakdown of a
long-cherished scheme of exploration in the Greek islands, which was
to have been realized that very autumn--a scheme towards which his
whole narrow impetuous mind had been turned for years. No more
Hellenic or Asia Minor excavations! no more cosmopolitan
_Wissenschaft_! On that fatal August 4 a whole world went down
submerged beneath the waves of war, and the Squire cared for no
other. His personal chagrin showed itself in abuse of the bungling
diplomats and 'swashbuckler' politicians who, according to him, had
brought us into war. So that when Aubrey applied for a commission,
the Squire, mainly to relieve his own general irritation, had
quarrelled with him for some months, and was only outwardly
reconciled when his son came home invalided in 1915.

During the summer of 1917, Aubrey, after spending three days' leave
at Mannering, had gone on to stay at Chetworth with the Chicksands
for a week. The result of that visit was a letter to his father in
which he announced his engagement to Beryl. The Squire could make
then no open opposition, since he was still on friendly terms with
Sir Henry, who had indeed done him more than one good turn. But in
reply to his son's letter, he stood entirely on the defensive, lest
any claim should be made upon him which might further interfere with
the passion of his life. He was not, he said, in a position to
increase Aubrey's allowance--the Government robbers had seen to
that--and unless Beryl was prepared to be a poor man's wife he
advised them to wait till after the war. Then Sir Henry had ridden
over to Mannering with a statement of what he was prepared to do for
his daughter, and the Squire had given ungracious consent to a
marriage in the spring. Chicksands knew his man too well to take
offence at the Squire's manners, and Beryl was for a time too
timidly and blissfully happy to be troubled by them.

'You