Ever since that dreadful time, two years before, when, lured by the glamour of Rodney Spelvin, she had taken a studio in the artistic quarter, dropped her golf, and practically learned to play the ukelele, Jane had been unremitting in her efforts to be a good mother and to bring up her son on the strictest principles. And, in order that his growing mind might have every chance, she had invited William’s younger sister, Anastatia, to spend a week or two with them and put the child right on the true functions of the mashie. For Anastatia had reached the semi-finals of the last Ladies’ Open Championship and, unlike many excellent players, had the knack of teaching. On the evening on which this story opens the two women were sitting in the drawing-room, chatting. They had finished tea; and Anastatia, with the aid of a lump of sugar, a spoon, and some crumbled cake, was illustrating the method by which she had got out of the rough on the fifth at Squashy Hollow. “You’re wonderful!” said Jane, admiringly. “And such a good influence for Braid! You’ll give him his lesson to-morrow afternoon as usual?” “I shall have to make it the morning,” said Anastatia. “I’ve promised to meet a man in town in the afternoon.” As she spoke there came into her face a look so soft and dreamy that it aroused Jane as if a bradawl had been driven into her leg. As her history has already shown, there was a strong streak of romance in Jane Bates. “Who is he?” she asked, excitedly. “A man I met last summer,” said Anastatia. And she sighed with such abandon that Jane could no longer hold in check her womanly nosiness. “Do you love him?” she cried. “Like bricks,” whispered Anastatia. “Does he love you?” “Sometimes I think so.” “What’s his name?” “Rodney Spelvin.” “What!” “Oh, I know he writes the most awful bilge,” said Anastatia, defensively, misinterpreting the yowl of horror which had proceeded from Jane. “All the same, he’s a darling.” Jane could not speak. She stared at her sister-in-law aghast. Although she knew that if you put a driver in her hands she could paste the ball into the next county, there always seemed to her something fragile and helpless about Anastatia. William’s sister was one of those small, rose-leaf girls with big blue eyes to whom good men instinctively want to give a stroke a hole and on whom bad men automatically prey. And when Jane reflected that Rodney Spelvin had to all intents and purposes preyed upon herself, who stood five foot seven in her shoes and, but for an innate love of animals, could have felled an ox with a blow, she shuddered at the thought of how he would prey on this innocent half-portion. “You really love him?” she quavered. “If he beckoned to me in the middle of a medal round, I would come to him,” said Anastatia.