“I hear,” he said, “that you want to play polo up at Oxford.”

Val became less recumbent in his chair.

“Rather!” he said.

“Well,” continued Soames, “that’s a very expensive business.  Your grandfather isn’t likely to consent to it unless he can make sure that he’s not got any other drain on him.”  And he paused to see whether the boy understood his meaning.

Val’s thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered: 

“I suppose you mean my Dad!”

“Yes,” said Soames; “I’m afraid it depends on whether he continues to be a drag or not;” and said no more, letting the boy dream it over.

But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey and a girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed, he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned.  To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend this Vacation in ‘seeing fellows,’ and his evenings sleepily at home.  They could not propose anything in daylight that did not meet with the one response:  “Sorry; I’ve got to see a fellow”; and he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the Goat’s Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world would he breathe to the ‘fellows,’ whom he was not ‘seeing,’ anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and his.  But he could not help its destroying his other appetites.  It was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes, and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in a moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his ‘life.’  But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five were spoil-sports, prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would have to go through with College, and she would have to ‘come out,’ before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as he could see her?  Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to confide in.  Ah!  And this beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune to have a name which other people hadn’t!  If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or Howard