Nevil—­who would have given a good deal to be elsewhere—­awaited her in the library:  and at the first shock of their encountering glances, he stiffened all through.  He was apt to be restive under advice, and rebellious under dictation; facts none knew better than Jane, who throve on advice and dictation—­given, not received!  She still affected the neat hard coat and skirt and the neat hard summer hat that had so distressed the awakening beauty-sense of nine-year-old Roy:  only, in place of the fierce wing there uprose in majesty a severely wired bow.  Jane was so unvarying, outside and in; a worse failing, almost, in the eyes of this hopelessly artistic household, than her talent for pouncing, or advising or making up other people’s minds.

But to-day, as she glanced round the familiar room, her sigh—­half anger, half bitterness of heart—­was genuine.  She did care intensely, in her own way, for the brother whom she hectored without mercy.  And he too cared—­in his own way—­more than he chose to reveal.  But their love was a dumb thing, rooted in ancestral mysteries.  Their surface clash of temperament was more loquacious.

“I suppose we’re fairly safe from interruption?” she asked, with ominous emphasis; and Nevil gravely indicated the largest leather chair.

“I believe the others are out,” he said, half sitting on the edge of the writing-table and proceeding to light a cigarette.  “But, upon my soul, I don’t know why you put yourself out to come down all this way when I told you plainly everything was fixed up.”

“You thought I’d swallow that—­and keep my mouth shut?” she retorted, bristling visibly. “I’m no fool, Nevil, if you are.  I told you how it would be, when you went out in ’99.  You wouldn’t listen then.  Perhaps you’ll at least have the sense to listen now?”

Nevil shrugged.  “As you’ve come all this way for the satisfaction of airing your views—­I’ve not much choice in the matter.”

And the latitude, thus casually given, she took in full measure.  For twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in moments of excitement....

To the familiar tuning-up process, Nevil listened unmoved.  But his anger rose with her rising eloquence:—­the unwilling anger of a cool man, more formidable than mere temper.

Such fine distinctions, however, were unknown to Jane.  If you were in a temper, you were in a temper.  That was flat.  And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil’s.  Heated opposition would stiffen her own....