the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road.  The fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark’s name, once so often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the general severance which had gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter; something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable.  The perception of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the instincts of their craft, Rainham’s reticence was respected.

“It was curious, when you come to think of it,” Copal said reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal ramble in Finistere, and while the situation was still new to him, “very curious.  Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn.  And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow.  Sounds like Euclid, doesn’t it?  Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one another.”

“Yes,” assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard.  “And there was a time—­not so very long ago, either—­when Lightmark and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!”

“Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later.  But it certainly does look a little as if—­as if Lightmark had done something and the other two had found it out—­Oswyn first.  However, it’s no business of ours.  I suppose he’s safe to be elected next week,—­though he isn’t a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?”

“Quite,” said the other laconically.

And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key as they resumed their discussion of the colony of American pleinairistes with whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and of the “paintability” of fields of sarrasin and poplars.

Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England.  Sir Egbert’s orders?  They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to obey his doctors.  The transfer of his business?  That could have been carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.

For some time after Kitty’s death—­and her illness had certainly at first detained him—­he was able to assure himself that he was waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman’s family; the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render this all more necessary.  But now, in the face of Bullen’s somewhat deferential devotion and his wife’s vociferous raptures, there hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score.  For the present, at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much petted.