From the top of the stairs Robert had watched Christine go into dinner on his father’s arm, and Edith Stonehouse follow with a black-coated stranger who had known his mother.  He had listened to the talk and his father’s laughter—­jovial and threatening—­and once he had dived downstairs and, peering through the banisters like a small blond monkey, had snatched a cream meringue from a passing tray.  Then for a moment he had almost believed that they were all going to be happy together.

That had been last night.  Now there was nothing left but the bailiff, still slightly befuddled, an incredible pile of unwashed dishes and an atmosphere of stale tobacco.  James Stonehouse had gone off early in a black and awful temper.  It seemed that at the last moment the multi-millionaire had explained that owing to a hitch in his affairs he was short of ready cash and would be glad of a small loan.  Only temporary, of course.  Wouldn’t have dreamed of asking, but meeting such an old friend in such affluent circumstances——­

So the eighth birthday had been forgotten.  Robert himself could not have explained why grief should have driven him to his father’s cigars-box.  Perhaps it was just a beau geste of defiance, or a reminder that one day he too would be grown up and free.  At any rate, it was still a very large cigar.  Though he puffed at it painstakingly, blowing the smoke far out of the window so as to escape detection, the result was not encouraging.  The exquisite mauve-grey ash was indeed less than a quarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and injustice deepened to an overwhelming despair.  It was not only that even Christine had failed him—­everything was failing him.  The shabby plot of rising ground opposite, which justified Dr. Stonehouse’s contention that he looked out over open country, had become immersed in a loathsome mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled and undulated like an uneasy reptile.  The house likewise heaved, and Robert had to lean hard against the lintel of the window to prevent himself from falling out.  A strange sensation of uncertainty—­of internal disintegration—­obsessed him, and there was a cold moisture gathering on his face.  He felt that at any moment anything might happen.  He didn’t care.  He wanted to die, anyhow.  They had forgotten him, but when he was dead they would be sorry.  His father would give him a beautiful funeral, and Christine would say, “We can’t afford it, Jim,” and there would be another awful scene.

In the next room Edith and Christine were talking as they rolled up the Axminster carpet which, since the bailiff had no claim on it, was to go to the pawnbroker’s to appease the butcher.  The door stood open, and he could hear Edith’s bitter, resentful voice raised in denunciation.

“I don’t know why I stand it.  If my poor dear father, Sir Godfrey, knew what I was enduring, he would rise from the grave.  Never did I think I should have to go through such humiliation.  My sisters say I ought to leave him—­that I am wanting in right feeling, but I can’t help it.  I am faithful by nature.  I remember my promises at the altar—­even if Jim forgets his——­”