This idea amused him again and offered another jest.  The tragedy really resolved into jests.  He found himself smiling at the picture of May being treated like a disobedient schoolboy.  But if that happened, and Tom was proclaimed the sinner, what must be Henry’s own fate?  To win the reputation of an unsportsmanlike sneak in Mary’s opinion as well as Tom’s.  He certainly could call upon nobody to help him now.  But he might go and look up May himself.  That would be very sharply resented, however.  He travelled round and round in circles, then asked himself what he would do and say to-morrow if anything happened to Tom—­nothing, of course, fatal, but something perhaps so grave that May himself would be unable to explain it.  In that case Henry could only state facts exactly as they had occurred.  But there would be a deuce of a muddle if he had to make statements and describe the exact sequence of recent incidents.  Already he forgot the exact sequence.  It seemed ages since he parted from May.  He broke off there, rose, drank a glass of water, and lighted a cigarette.  He shook himself into wakefulness, condemned himself for this debauch of weak-minded thinking, found the time to be three o’clock, and brushed the whole cobweb tangle from his mind.  He knew that sudden warmth after cold will often induce sleep—­a fact proved by incidents of his campaigns—­so he trudged up and down and opened his window and let the cool breath of the night chill his forehead and breast for five minutes.

This action calmed him, and he headed himself off from returning to the subject.  He felt that mental dread and discomfort were only waiting to break out again; but he smothered them, returned to bed, and succeeded in keeping his mind on neutral-tinted matter until he fell asleep.

He woke again before he was called, rose and went to his bath.  He took it cold, and it refreshed him and cleared his head, for he had a headache.  Everything was changed, and the phantoms of his imagination remained only as memories to be laughed at.  He no longer felt alarm or anxiety.  He dressed presently, and guessing that Tom, always the first to rise, might already be out of doors, he strolled on to the terrace presently to meet him there.

Already he speculated whether an apology was due from him to May, or whether he might himself expect one.  It didn’t matter.  He knew perfectly well that Tom was all right now, and that was the only thing that signified.

CHAPTER III

AT THE ORIEL

Chadlands sprang into existence when the manor houses of England—­ save for the persistence of occasional embattled parapets and other warlike survivals of unrestful days now past—­had obeyed the laws of architectural evolution, and begun to approach a future of cleanliness and comfort, rising to luxury hitherto unknown.  The development of this ancient mass was displayed in plan as much as in elevation, and, at its date, the great mansion had stood for the last word of perfection, when men thought on large lines and the conditions of labour made possible achievements now seldom within the power of a private purse.  Much had since been done, but the main architectural features were preserved, though the interior of the great house was transformed.