's case without mincing his words.

"You don't show it outwardly, at least not to a layman, but any medical
man would see what was the matter with you. What makes you drink?"

Jimmy had shrugged his shoulders, half-ashamed, half-irritated. "Habit,
I suppose," he had answered, whereupon the other had growled.

"A confoundedly bad and stupid habit. The sooner you get some new ones
the better. You write, don't you? How do you expect to make a success of
it when you're sapping your brain power in this fool's way?"

He had added a few more things, pointed and true, but none the less they
had parted good friends, and for a time Jimmy tried to fight his enemy,
remembering his promise to Lalage; but it was always the same in the
end. His black hour would come on him, and he would recall his great
treason, and tell himself bitterly that she had been the first to set
the example in the matter of broken faith.

Whatever fears May might have had on the point--and the matter certainly
had worried her a good deal during the last twelve months--there had
never been any question of Jimmy going back to Lalage. True, he had
broken away from the Grierson tradition when he went to live at the
flat, had thrown that tradition to the winds, but still he had never
repudiated it openly, and in the end if he had not actually gone back to
his own people, at least he had recognised that the standards of his own
people were right. He was ashamed of himself, even more ashamed of
Lalage. He saw his conduct--and hers--in its true light, its stupidity,
and its immorality, and in the days following Joseph Fenton's death he
had reached the nadir of contrition and misery, and would have made
confession, and sought for absolution, had the family given him the
chance. He was in the mood for it, being run-down and broken-hearted.
But Joseph's death had altered the focus of things for the moment,
making Jimmy's affairs a secondary consideration, and after the reading
of the will, Joseph's legacy had effectually destroyed any hope of
peace, at least as far as Ida was concerned. Fenton had left, it is
true, nearly a hundred thousand to his wife, but the odd thousand to
Jimmy almost neutralised the generosity of his other bequests, at least
in Ida's sight, and Ida's personality dominated the whole family for the
time being.

Curiously enough, no one knew of Jimmy's last meeting with Joseph. At
first Jimmy had held his peace about it, not wishing in any way