“And Barbara comes this evening as well as Michael, does she not?” he said.  “I hope she will not take Michael’s part in his absurd scheme.”

“I have given Barbara the blue room,” said Lady Ashbridge, after a little thought.  “I am afraid she may bring her great dog with her.  I hope he will not quarrel with Petsy.  Petsy does not like other dogs.”

The day had been very hot, and Lord Ashbridge, not having taken any exercise, went off to have a round of golf with the professional of the links that lay not half a mile from the house.  He considered exercise an essential part of the true Englishman’s daily curriculum, and as necessary a contribution to the traditional mode of life which made them all what they were—­or should be—­as a bath in the morning or attendance at church on Sunday.  He did not care so much about playing golf with a casual friend, because the casual friend, as a rule, casually beat him—­thus putting him in an un-English position—­and preferred a game with this first-class professional whose duty it was—­in complete violation of his capacities—­to play just badly enough to be beaten towards the end of the round after an exciting match.  It required a good deal of cleverness and self-control to accomplish this, for Lord Ashbridge was a notably puerile performer, but he generally managed it with tact and success, by dint of missing absurdly easy putts, and (here his skill came in) by pulling and slicing his ball into far-distant bunkers.  Throughout the game it was his business to keep up a running fire of admiring ejaculations such as “Well driven, my lord,” or “A fine putt, my lord.  Ah! dear me, I wish I could putt like that,” though occasionally his chorus of praise betrayed him into error, and from habit he found himself saying:  “Good shot, my lord,” when my lord had just made an egregious mess of things.  But on the whole he devised so pleasantly sycophantic an atmosphere as to procure a substantial tip for himself, and to make Lord Ashbridge conscious of being a very superior performer.  Whether at the bottom of his heart he knew he could not play at all, he probably did not inquire; the result of his matches and his opponent’s skilfully-showered praise was sufficient for him.  So now he left the discouraging companionship of his wife and Petsy and walked swingingly across the garden and the park to the links, there to seek in Macpherson’s applause the self-confidence that would enable him to encounter his republican sister and his musical son with an unyielding front.

His spirits mounted rapidly as he went.  It pleased him to go jauntily across the lawn and reflect that all this smooth turf was his, to look at the wealth of well-tended flowers in his garden and know that all this polychromatic loveliness was bred in Lord Ashbridge’s borders (and was graciously thrown open to the gaze of the admiring public on Sunday afternoon, when they were begged to keep off the grass), and that Lord Ashbridge was himself.  He liked