He was waiting by a stile leading into a wood that gave quicker access to Marden Court, and he came forward to meet them with undisguised pleasure. Charles Aston had rendered but small homage to time. He was as erect and thin as ever, hair perhaps a little white, but the kind eyes had lost nothing of their penetrating quality. Christopher's welcome could not have been warmer had it been his own father. Max went ahead to find Charlotte and left the two to come on together. "How is Caesar?" demanded Christopher, the moment they were alone. "Can't you wait for his own report?" "I want yours." There was an urgent insistence in his voice, and Mr. Aston looked at him sharply. "Well, he is decidedly better since he came down here, and I want him to stay, Christopher, to give up London in the end perhaps altogether." "He has not been well then?" "I have not thought so: but what made you suspicious, my dear boy?" "His letters have been over-witty and deliberately satirical. Just the sort of things he says when something is wrong." Mr. Aston nodded. "Yes, I felt that. There seemed nothing physically wrong, but I felt he must have more people round him." "And you?" "Oh, I stay here too, and go up and down when needs must." "And the Colonial Commission? How will it get on without you?" "Oh, they easily found a better man. As I explained to Caesar, I was only asked as a compliment," he answered simply. Christopher kept to himself his dissent from this, and was silent a moment, thinking how this man's life was spent to one end; and desirable as he felt that end to be, he was of age now to feel a tinge of regret for all that had been and still was sacrificed to it. An infinitesimal sacrifice of personal feeling and convenience was demanded of him now, if he were to second St. Michael's attempt to keep Aymer from Aston House and teach him to permanently regard Marden Court as home, for dearly as Christopher loved Marden it was only there he was awake to the apparently indisputable truth that he was not one of that dear family who had done their best to make him forget once and for all that obnoxious fact. His sense of proprietorship in Aymer and of Aymer's in him was undeniably stronger in town than in the country, and this not entirely because Nevil was to all intents master of Marden, but rather that there Aymer himself was less isolated, merged more into the general family life, and became again part of the usages and traditions of his own race.