"Oh, Lord!" groaned Hubert. "Well, it's of no use putting off the evil day. Here goes. Oh, it's nice to have a father! Well, mother, and what's it all about?" as Mrs Dorrien entered the room. "I don't know for certain, dear," she said anxiously. "But I think your father only wants to talk to you about your allowance." A very blank look came into his face. "Couldn't be much worse," he muttered, and went to meet his fate. And soothly, a bad quarter of an hour was in store for him, for it happened that the General had received certain bills on his account--not University duns, but long outstanding London debts, and, as to one, a letter of demand. Cold, sarcastic and incisive was the lecture he poured forth on the head of the luckless Hubert. He reminded him of former scrapes of the kind, of the fact that he would have little or nothing hereafter but what he obtained by his own exertions, and wound up by recommending him to apply himself to his reading with renewed determination. Hubert, who thought he was getting into smooth water again, began to promise, but once more his father cut him ruthlessly short. "And now, for the third time," he said, "I shall have to get you out of the embarrassment into which your own folly has plunged you--but I shall not do so without exacting some guarantee that you will make a good use of your time in return. Your mother tells me that you and Roland are invited to spend a fortnight at Ardleigh Court." "Oho!" thought Hubert, noting a slight frown which came over his father's face at the mention of his brother. "Oho!--so Roland's in the veteran's black books, too! Wonder what about." "--This invitation you will decline," went on the hard, condemnatory voice. "Amusement and work in your case don't agree--and work you must. Every morning from breakfast time till luncheon during the next six weeks I shall expect you to be at your books, unless I see special reason to make an exception. You have done literally no work at all since your return home this vacation, and it is high time you began. And for the last time these"--tapping the bills lying upon his desk--"shall be paid. Are there any more of them outstanding, by the way?" Now why had not Hubert the courage to make a clean breast of it. Here was an opportunity such as would not occur again. Ah I that slightly receding chin. "Only two or three, for small amounts," he faltered. "Very good. Make a list of them here," handing him a piece of paper. "--And that is all? Yes? Then I need not detain you here any further-- except again to impress upon you the necessity of attending to what I have been saying." Hubert went out of his father's presence with hot, seething rage at his heart. He to be confined to the house every morning like a schoolboy, with a set task to do. "Gated," in fact--and that by his own father, and in his home. It was humiliating in the extreme. And there was no way in which the devil within him could find vent.