If, Michael said, they chose to dissociate themselves altogether from their eldest son and his career, very well.  They could go on ignoring and tacitly insulting Mr. Stephen.  He could understand their taking a consistently wrong-headed line like that; but so long as they had any regard, either for him or his career, he didn’t see how they could very well keep it up any longer.  He was sorry, of course, that his career had let them in for Stephen if they didn’t like him; but there it was.

And beyond a doubt it was there.

“You might vindicate Bartie gloriously,” Michael said, “by turning me out of the house and disinheriting me.  But would it be worth while?  I’m not asking you to condone Stephen’s conduct—­if you can’t condone it; I’m asking you either to acknowledge or repudiate your son’s debts.

“After all, if he can condone your beastly treatment of him—­I wouldn’t like him if he was the swine you think him.”

And Anthony had appealed to Michael’s mother.

To his “Well, Frances, what do you think?  Ought we or oughtn’t we?” she had replied:  “I think we ought to stand solid behind Michael.”

It was Michael’s life that counted, for it was going on into a great future.  Bartie would pass and Michael would remain.

Their nervous advances had ended in a complete surrender to Stephen’s charm.

Vera and Stephen seemed to think that the way to show the sincerity and sweetness of their reconciliation was to turn up as often as possible on Frances’s Day.  They arrived always at the same hour, a little late; they came by the road and the front door, so that when Bartie saw them coming he could retreat through the garden door and the lane.  The Flemings and the Jervises retreated with him; and presently, when it had had a good look at the celebrities, the rest of the party followed.

This Saturday Frances’s Day dwindled and melted away and closed, after its manner; only Vera and Stephen lingered.  They stayed on talking to Michael long after everybody else had gone.

Stephen said he had come to say good-bye to Michael’s people and to make a proposal to Michael himself.  He was going to Ireland.

Vera interrupted him with passion.

“He isn’t.  He hasn’t any proposal to make.  He hasn’t come to say good-bye.”

Her restless, unhappy eyes turned to him incessantly, as if, more than ever, she was afraid that he would escape her, that he would go off God knew where.

God knew where he was going, but Vera did not believe that he was going to Ireland.  He had talked about going to Ireland for years, and he had never gone.

Stephen looked as if he did not see her; as if he did not even see Michael very distinctly.

“I’m going,” he said, “to Ireland on Monday week, the third of August.  I mayn’t come back for long enough.  I may not come back at all.”

“That’s the sort of thing he keeps on saying.”