The baronet’s head sank again between his shoulders.

“Tell him that I can’t see him,” he said in a dull voice.

The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability merely to professional pride.  Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man.  Here was a reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester Splay, and the baronet would not see him!  The incongruity struck Sir Chichester himself.

“Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell?  Rather hard treatment on a man who has come so far?  What do you think, Hillyard?  I suppose I ought to see him for a moment—­yes.”  Sir Chichester raised his voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative sentences preceding it.  “Harper!  Harper!” and Harper reappeared.  “I have been thinking about it, Harper.  The unfortunate man may lose his whole morning if I don’t see him.  We all agree that to send him away would be unkind.”

“He has gone, sir.”

“Gone?” exclaimed Sir Chichester testily.  “God bless my soul!  Did he seem disappointed, Harper?”

“Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck of all a heap, sir.”

“That will do, Harper,” said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.

“Struck all of a heap!” said Sir Chichester sadly.  “Well he might be!” He looked up and caught Harry’s eye.  “They say, Luttrell, that breaking a habit is only distressing during the first few days.  With each refusal of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength.  I believe that to be so, Luttrell.”

“It is very likely, sir,” Harry replied.

Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning.  For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand.  Sir Chichester did not notice the parcel.  He sprang up, and with a distinct note of eager pleasure in his voice, he cried: 

“He has come back!  Then I really think——­”

“No, sir,” Harper interrupted.  “These are cigarettes.”

“Oh, yes,” Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table.  “I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box.”

“Oh, cigarettes!” Sir Chichester’s voice sagged again.  He contemplated the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin’s finger.  His face became a little stern.  “That’s a bad habit, Hillyard,” he observed, shaking his head.  “It will grow on you—­nicotine poisoning may supervene at any moment.  You had better begin to break yourself of it at once.  I think so.”

“Chichester!” cried Millie Splay.  “What in the world are you doing?”

Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin’s hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.

“A little strength of character, Hillyard....  You saw me a minute ago....  The first few days, I believe, are trying.”