He went rather drearily to the window.  Far off across the field below the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along on his way to the links, with his head held high, his stick swinging in his hand, his two retrievers at his heels.  No doubt already the soothing influences of Nature were at work—­Nature, of course, standing for the portion of trees and earth and houses that belonged to him—­and were expunging the depressing reflection that his wife and only son inspired in him.  And, indeed, such was actually the case:  Lord Ashbridge, in his amazing fatuity, could not long continue being himself without being cheered and invigorated by that fact, and though when he set out his big white hands were positively trembling with passion, he carried his balsam always with him.  But he had registered to himself, even as Michael had registered, the fact that he found his son a most intolerable person.  And what vexed him most of all, what made him clang the gate at the end of the field so violently that it hit one of his retrievers shrewdly on the nose, was the sense of his own impotence.  He knew perfectly well that in point of view of determination (that quality which in himself was firmness, and in those who opposed him obstinacy) Michael was his match.  And the annoying thing was that, as his wife had once told him, Michael undoubtedly inherited that quality from him.  It was as inalienable as the estates of which he had threatened to deprive his son, and which, as he knew quite well, were absolutely entailed.  Michael, in this regard, seemed no better than a common but successful thief.  He had annexed his father’s firmness, and at his death would certainly annex all his pictures and trees and acres and the red roofs of Ashbridge.

Michael saw the gate so imperially slammed, he heard the despairing howl of Robin, and though he was sorry for Robin, he could not help laughing.  He remembered also a ludicrous sight he had seen at the Zoological Gardens a few days ago:  two seals, sitting bolt upright, quarrelling with each other, and making the most absurd grimaces and noises.  They neither of them quite dared to attack the other, and so sat with their faces close together, saying the rudest things.  Aunt Barbara would certainly have seen how inimitably his father and he had, in their interview just now, resembled the two seals.

And then he became aware that all the time, au fond, he had thought about nothing but Sylvia, and of Sylvia, not as the subject of quarrel, but as just Sylvia, the singing Sylvia, with a hand on his shoulder.

The winter sun was warm on the south terrace of the house, when, an hour later, he strolled out, according to arrangement, with his mother.  It had melted the rime of the night before that lay now on the grass in threads of minute diamonds, though below the terrace wall, and on the sunk rims of the empty garden beds it still persisted in outline of white heraldry.  A few monthly roses, weak, pink blossoms, weary with