med to have diverged even farther from that healthy and
unreflective pattern. Only this morning his father had received a letter
from him that summed Michael up, that fulfilled all the doubts and fears
that had hung about him; for after three years in the Guards he had,
without consultation with anybody, resigned his commission on the
inexplicable grounds that he wanted to do something with his life. To
begin with that was rankly heretical; if you were a Comber there was no
need to do anything with your life; life did everything for you. . . .
And what this un-Comberish young man wanted to do with his life was to
be a musician. That musicians, artists, actors, had a right to exist
Lord Ashbridge did not question. They were no doubt (or might be)
very excellent people in their way, and as a matter of fact he often
recognised their existence by going to the opera, to the private view
of the Academy, or to the play, and he took a very considerable pride of
proprietorship in his own admirable collection of family portraits. But
then those were pictures of Combers; Reynolds and Romney and the rest of
them had enjoyed the privilege of perpetuating on their canvases these
big, fine men and charming women. But that a Comber--and that one
positively the next Lord Ashbridge--should intend to devote his energies
to an artistic calling, and allude to that scheme as doing something
with his life, was a thing as unthinkable as if the butler had developed
a fixed idea that he was "one of us."

The blow was a recent one; Michael's letter had only reached his father
this morning, and at the present moment Lord Ashbridge was attempting
over a cup of tea on the long south terrace overlooking the estuary to
convey--not very successfully--to his wife something of his feelings
on the subject. She, according to her custom, was drinking a little hot
water herself, and providing her Chinese pug with a mixture of cream
and crumbled rusks. Though the dog was of undoubtedly high lineage, Lord
Ashbridge rather detested her.

"A musical career!" he exclaimed, referring to Michael's letter. "What
sort of a career for a Comber is a musical career? I shall tell Michael
pretty roundly when he arrives this evening what I think of it all. We
shall have Francis next saying that he wants to resign, too, and become
a dentist."

Lady Ashbridge considered this for a moment in her stunned mind.

"Dear me, Robert, I hope not," she said. "I do not think it the