“I saw you and that fellow in the Park.”

The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!

“Well?” she said.

Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.

“Do you know,” he said weightily, “that he called me a pro-Boer last term?  And I had to fight him.”

“Who won?”

Jolly wished to answer:  ‘I should have,’ but it seemed beneath him.

“Look here!” he said, “what’s the meaning of it?  Without telling anybody!”

“Why should I?  Dad isn’t here; why shouldn’t I ride with him?”

“You’ve got me to ride with.  I think he’s an awful young rotter.”

Holly went pale with anger.

“He isn’t.  It’s your own fault for not liking him.”

And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded from him so far by his sister’s dark head under her soft felt riding hat.  He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young foundations.  A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.  He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.

Why didn’t he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started thirteen years before with Bosinney’s defection from June in favour of Soames’ wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea.  He just did dislike him.  The question, however, was:  What should he do?  Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to go about with him.  And yet to ‘tell’ of what he had chanced on was against his creed.  In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.

‘Grandfather!’ he thought without sequence, and took out his watch.  He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  ‘Five o’clock!’ His grandfather’s first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age—­all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall.  The chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they first came from St. John’s Wood, London, to this house—­came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees.  Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below!  What was to be done?  Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?—­only she was so—­so sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac. would soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his address?  Holly wouldn’t give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper:  ’Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!’ And Jolly heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils....