parently, to fix the attention
of some gentleman moving in the opposite direction.

At lunch Harry had made a determined effort towards cheerfulness. He
had learnt that heartiness was bad manners and effusion a crime, so he
was quiet and restrained. But his efforts failed miserably; Robin
seemed worried and his thoughts were evidently far away, Clare was
occupied with the impertinence of some stranger who had thrust himself
into the Trojan pew at the last moment, and Garrett was repeating
complacently a story that he had heard at the Club tending to prove the
unsanitary condition of the lower classes in general and the
inhabitants of the Cove in particular. After lunch they had left him
alone; he had not dared to petition Robin for a walk, so, sick at heart
and miserably lonely, he had wandered disconsolately into the library.
He had taken from one of the shelves the volume T-U of _The Dictionary
of National Biography_, and had amused himself by searching for the
names of heroes in Trojan annals.

There was only one who really mattered--a certain Humphrey Trojan,
1718-1771; a man apparently of poor circumstances and quite a distant
cousin of the main branch, one who had been in all probability despised
by the Sir Henry Trojan of that time. Nevertheless he had been a
person of some account in history and had, from the towers of the
House, watched the sea and the stars to some purpose. He had been
admitted, Harry imagined, into the sacred precincts after his
researches had made him a person of national importance, and it was
amusing to picture Sir Henry's pride transformed into a rather
obsequious familiarity when "My cousin, Humphrey, had been honoured by
an interview with his Majesty and had received an Order at the royal
hand"--amusing, yes, but not greatly to the glory of Sir Henry. Harry
liked to picture Humphrey in his days of difficulty--sturdy,
persevering, confident in his own ability, oblivious of the cuts dealt
him by his cousin. Time would show.

He let the book fall and gazed at the fire, thinking. After all, he
was a poor creature. He had none of that perseverance and belief in
his own ultimate success, and it was better, perhaps, to get right out
of it, to throw up the sponge, to turn tail, and again there floated
before him that wonderful dream of liberty and the road--of a
relationship with the world at large, and no constraint of family
dignity and absurd grades of respectability. Off with t