“No, no, Pendyce.”

The Squire began to pace the room, and Mr. Barter felt something stir against his foot; the spaniel John emerging at the end, just where the moonlight shone, a symbol of all that was subservient to the Squire, gazed up at his master with tragic eyes.  ‘Here, again,’ they seemed to say, ‘is something to disturb me!’

The Squire broke the silence.

“I’ve always counted on you, Barter; I count on you as I would on my own brother.  Come, now, what’s this about George?”

‘After all,’ thought the Rector, ’it’s his father!’—­“I know nothing but what they say,” he blurted forth; “they talk of his having lost a lot of money.  I dare say it’s all nonsense.  I never set much store by rumour.  And if he’s sold the horse, well, so much the better.  He won’t be tempted to gamble again.”

But Horace Pendyce made no answer.  A single thought possessed his bewildered, angry mind: 

‘My son a gambler!  Worsted Skeynes in the hands of a gambler!’

The Rector rose.

“It’s all rumour.  You shouldn’t pay any attention.  I should hardly think he’s been such a fool.  I only know that I must get back to my wife.  Good-night.”

And, nodding but confused, Mr. Barter went away through the French window by which he had come.

The Squire stood motionless.

A gambler!

To him, whose existence was bound up in Worsted Skeynes, whose every thought had some direct or indirect connection with it, whose son was but the occupier of that place he must at last vacate, whose religion was ancestor-worship, whose dread was change, no word could be so terrible.  A gambler!

It did not occur to him that his system was in any way responsible for George’s conduct.  He had said to Mr. Paramor:  “I never had a system; I’m no believer in systems.”  He had brought him up simply as a gentleman.  He would have preferred that George should go into the Army, but George had failed; he would have preferred that George should devote himself to the estate, marry, and have a son, instead of idling away his time in town, but George had failed; and so, beyond furthering his desire to join the Yeomanry, and getting him proposed for the Stoics’ Club, what was there he could have done to keep him out of mischief?  And now he was a gambler!

Once a gambler always a gambler!

To his wife’s face, looking down from the wall, he said: 

“He gets it from you!”

But for all answer the face stared gently.

Turning abruptly, he left the room, and the spaniel John, for whom he had been too quick, stood with his nose to the shut door, scenting for someone to come and open it.

Mr. Pendyce went to his study, took some papers from a locked drawer, and sat a long time looking at them.  One was the draft of his will, another a list of the holdings at Worsted Skeynes, their acreage and rents, a third a fair copy of the settlement, re-settling the estate when he had married.  It was at this piece of supreme irony that Mr. Pendyce looked longest.  He did not read it, but he thought: