Lord Ashbridge approached down the terrace.  He stopped for a moment at the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting together, and turned at right angles and went into the house.  Almost immediately a footman came out with a long dog-lead and advanced hesitatingly to Og.  Og was convinced that he had come to play with him, and crouched and growled and retreated and advanced with engaging affability.  Out of the windows of the library looked Lord Ashbridge’s baleful face. . . .  Aunt Barbara swayed out of her chair, and laid a trembling hand on Michael’s shoulder.

“I shall go and apologise for Og,” she said.  “I shall do it quite sincerely, my dear.  But there are points.”

CHAPTER IV

Michael practised a certain mature and rather elderly precision in the ordinary affairs of daily life.  His habits were almost unduly tidy and punctual; he answered letters by return of post, he never mislaid things nor tore up documents which he particularly desired should be preserved; he kept his gold in a purse and his change in a trousers-pocket, and in matters of travelling he always arrived at stations with plenty of time to spare, and had such creature comforts as he desired for his journey in a neat Gladstone bag above his head.  He never travelled first-class, for the very simple and adequate reason that, though very well off, he preferred to spend his money in ways that were more productive of usefulness or pleasure; and thus, when he took his place in the corner of a second-class compartment of the Dover-Ostend express on the Wednesday morning following, he was the only occupant of it.

Probably he had never felt so fully at liberty, nor enjoyed a keener zest for life and the future.  For the first time he had asserted his own indisputable right to stand on his own feet, and though he was genuinely sorry for his father’s chagrin at not being able to tuck him up in the family coach, his own sense of independence could not but wave its banners.  There had been a second interview, no less fruitless than the first, and Lord Ashbridge had told him that when next his presence was desired at home, he would be informed of the fact.  His mother had cried in a mild, trickling fashion, but it was quite obvious that in her heart of hearts she was more concerned with a bilious attack of peculiar intensity that had assailed Petsy.  She wished Michael would not be so disobedient and vex his father, but she was quite sure that before long some formula, in diplomatic phrase, would be found on which reconciliation could be based; whereas it was highly uncertain whether any formula could be found that would produce the desired effect on Petsy, whose illness she attributed to the shock of Og’s sudden and disconcerting appearance on Saturday, when all Petsy’s nervous force was required to digest the copious cream.  Consequently, though she threw reproachful glances at Michael, those directed at Barbara, who was the cause of the acuter tragedy, were pointed with more penetrating blame.  Indeed, it is questionable whether Lady Ashbridge would have cried at all over Michael’s affairs had not Petsy’s also been in so lamentable and critical a state.