“Ah, George,” he said, “your mother’s here, isn’t she?  Look at this that your father’s sent me!”

He held out a telegram in a shaky hand.

     “Margery up at Green’s Hotel.  Go and see her at once. 
                                   Horace.”

And while George read the General looked at his nephew with eyes that were ringed by little circles of darker pigment, and had crow’s-footed purses of skin beneath, earned by serving his country in tropical climes.

“What’s the meaning of it?” he said.  “Go and see her?  Of course, I’ll go and see her!  Always glad to see your mother.  But where’s all the hurry?”

George perceived well enough that his father’s pride would not let him write to her, and though it was for himself that his mother had taken this step, he sympathised with his father.  The General fortunately gave him little time to answer.

“She’s up to get herself some dresses, I suppose?  I’ve seen nothing of you for a long time.  When are you coming to dine with me?  I heard at Epsom that you’d sold your horse.  What made you do that?  What’s your father telegraphing to me like this for?  It’s not like him.  Your mother’s not ill, is she?”

George shook his head, and muttering something about “Sorry, an engagement—­awful hurry,” was gone.

Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page, slowly pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only persons in the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his cane.  And while he waited he tried as far as possible to think of nothing.  Having served his country, his time now was nearly all devoted to waiting, and to think fatigued and made him feel discontented, for he had had sunstroke once, and fever several times.  In the perfect precision of his collar, his boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time he cleared his throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face between his carefully brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white hands on his cane, he gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a system.  Only his eyes, restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential Pendyce that was behind.

He went up to the ladies’ drawing-room, clutching that telegram.  It worried him.  There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed to pay calls in the morning.  He found his sister-in-law seated at an open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright.  She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern what was not put under his nose.  Fortunately for him, that had never been his practice.

“How are you, Margery?” he said.  “Glad to see you in town.  How’s Horace?  Look here what he’s sent me!” He offered her the telegram, with the air of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as though he had lust thought of it:  “Is there anything I can do for you?”