“I have before now noticed your jealousy of your cousin,” he observed.

Michael’s face went white.

“That is infamous and untrue, father,” he said.

Lord Ashbridge turned on him.

“Apologise for that,” he said.

Michael looked up at his high towering without a tremor.

“I wait for the withdrawal of your accusation that I am jealous of Francis,” he replied.

There was a dead silence.  Lord Ashbridge stood there in swollen and speechless indignation, and Michael faced him undismayed. . . .  And then suddenly to the boy there came an impulse of pure pity for his father’s disappointment in having a son like himself.  He saw with the candour which was so real a part of him how hopeless it must be, to a man of his father’s mind, to have a millstone like himself unalterably bound round his neck, fit to choke and drown him.

“Indeed, I am not jealous of Francis, father,” he said, “and I speak quite truthfully when I say how I sympathise with you in having a son like me.  I don’t want to vex you.  I want to make the best of myself.”

Lord Ashbridge stood looking exactly like his statue in the market-place at Ashbridge.

“If that is the case, Michael,” he said, “it is within your power.  You will write the letter I spoke about.”

Michael paused a moment as if waiting for more.  It did not seem to him possible that his appeal should bear no further fruit than that.  But it was soon clear that there was no more to come.

“I will wish you good night, father,” he said.

Sunday was a day on which Lord Ashbridge was almost more himself than during the week, so shining and public an example did he become of the British nobleman.  Instead of having breakfast, according to the middle-class custom, rather later than usual, that solid sausagy meal was half an hour earlier, so that all the servants, except those whose presence in the house was imperatively necessary for purposes of lunch, should go to church.  Thus “Old George” and Lord Ashbridge’s private boat were exceedingly busy for the half-hour preceding church time, the last boat-load holding the family, whose arrival was the signal for service to begin.  Lady Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical whisper:  “His lordship has arrived, my lady.”  Those of the household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) clustered in the choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline.  Behind them, separated from the rest of the church by an ornamental ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel,