When he rode up to the Flood gateway everything appeared as usual.  The great lawns in front of the house were as immaculately kept as ever, and along the shrubberies which bordered the park there were gardeners still at work pegging down a broad edge of crimson rambler roses, which seemed to hold the sunset.  Falloden observed them.  “Who’s paying for them?” he thought.  At the front door two footmen received him; the stately head butler stood with a detached air in the background.

“Sir Arthur’s put off dinner half an hour, sir.  He’s in the library.”

Douglas went in search of his father.  He found him smoking and reading a novel, apparently half asleep.

“You’re very late, Duggy.  Never mind.  We’ve put off dinner.”

“I found Sprague had a great deal to say.”

Sprague was the subagent living on the further edge of the estate.  Douglas had spent the day with him, going into the recent valuation of an important group of farms.

“I dare say,” said Sir Arthur, lying back in his armchair.  “I’m afraid I don’t want to hear it.”

Douglas sat down opposite his father.  He was dusty and tired, and there were deep pits tinder his eyes.

“It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if that valuation is correct,” he said shortly.

“Will it?  I can’t help it.  I can’t go into it.  I can’t keep the facts and figures in my head, Duggy.  I’ve done too much of them this last ten years.  My brain gives up.  But you’ve got a splendid head, Duggy—­wonderful for your age.  I leave it to you, my son.  Do the best you can.”

Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence.  Sir Arthur was sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light beside him.  Douglas was struck by something strange in his father’s attitude and look—­a curious irresponsibility and remoteness.  The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared.  This mood of easy acquiescence—­almost levity—­was becoming permanent.  Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—­how shrunken his father was, and how grey.  And he was only fifty-two.  But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him.  The waste and pity—­and at the same time the irreparableness of it all—­sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son’s consciousness.  He was too young to bear it patiently.  He hastily shook it off.

“Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow,” he said, as he got up, meaning to go and dress.

Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn’t reply immediately.  He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his right.  It was an enchanting Romney—­a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms.  The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney’s ordinary mood.  It represented Sir Arthur’s great-grandmother, on his father’s side, a famous Irish beauty of the day.