“Mother, I am ashamed of my selfishness.  I never realized before how many things you have to care for.”

“From cocklight to the dim, Harry, there is always something needing my care.  Must house and farm and John and all our dumb fellow creatures go to the mischief for pretty Lucy Lugur?  My dear, I’m saying these things to you, because nobody else has a right to say them; but oh, Harry, it breaks my heart to say them!”

“Mother, forgive me.  I did not think of anything but the fact that you have always stood by me through thick and thin.”

“In all things right, I will stand by you.  In whatever is wrong I will be against you.  You have fallen into the net of bad company, and you can’t mend that trouble—­you can only run away from it.  Take John’s advice, and get out of the reach of that Naylor influence.”

“I never saw anything wrong with Frank Naylor.  He did not drink, he never touched a card, and he was always respectful to the women we met.”

“Harry, you would not dare to repeat to me all that Frank Naylor said to you.  Oh, my dear, there it is!  When you can shut your ears, as easily as your eyes, you can afford to be less particular about the company you keep—­not until.”

At this moment John entered, and the conversation became general and impersonal.  But the influence of uncertain and unlooked-for anxiety was over all, and Harry was eager to escape it.  He said the young men would be expecting him at their association hall, as he had promised to explain to them the mysteries of golf, which he wished them to favor above cricket.

He had, indeed, a promised obligation on this subject, but the exact time was as yet within his own decision.  Yet he was ready to fulfill it that evening, rather than listen to the conversation about himself and his future, which he knew would ensue whether he was present or not.  And the promise John had given him of a year’s holiday was so satisfactory that he longed to be alone and at liberty to follow it out and fit it into his life.

He felt that John had been generous to him, but he also felt that the proposed manner of rest and recreation was in one respect altogether unsatisfactory—­he was to be sent away from Lucy Lugur.  He was sure that was John’s real and ultimate motive, whatever other motive was virtually put in its place.  Mother and brother would agree on that point and he thought of this agreement with a discontent that rapidly became anger.  Then he determined to marry Lucy, and so have a right to her company on land or sea, at home or abroad.

For he argued only from his own passionate desire.  Lucy had never said she loved him, yet he felt sure she did so.  He loved her the moment they met, and he had no doubt Lucy had been affected in the same manner as himself.  He knew her for his own, lost out of his soul-life long ago and suddenly found one afternoon as she stood with her father at the gate of their little garden.  She had roses in her hands, or rather they were lying across her white arms, and her exquisite face rose above them, thrilling his heart with a strange but powerful sense of a right in her that was wholly satisfying and indisputable.