The sight of Evelyn’s card revived old memories; he smiled, absently fingering it for a moment before entering the little sitting-room. It was years since he had seen her. He remembered her as an undisciplined child; a small person with ideals which were never realized, an odd mixture of dreams and contradictions. Knowing Brand and Brand’s capabilities as he did, no one was more surprised than Cummings at the marriage. Partly for love of the cause, partly to kill thought, he had done the work of ten in his district, until at last his health gave way completely. A stray bishop paying pastoral visits in the neighbourhood took him in hand, and summarily ordered him away at a moment’s notice on a sea-voyage and six months’ leave. Medical opinions at home were slightly alarming; on his arrival in London he was packed off to Brighton within twenty-four hours. As he opened the door of the little sitting-room he thought at first that it was the old unchanged Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly. But to read men’s souls is part of the priestly office, and there was something in her air of enforced gaiety which made him look at her more closely. "You dear!" she said, holding his hands in hers as if they were a source of strength. "Isn’t this a nice surprise? Lord Creagh offered to drive me down, and I couldn’t resist the chance of routing you out." "You are just one of the few people I wanted to see," said Cummings. "One of my last remaining links with the past. I won’t have another soul admitted while you’re here. You’ll let me smoke, won’t you? I want to hear about everything and everybody. I’m going to have my say first, yours comes later. If you talk as much as you used, I shan’t get a look in when once you’ve started." She became more at ease as he spoke. He pulled an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back. "Now begin about home, please. Is my mother’s complexion still like a Greuze? How absolutely lovely she was once! Some one told me that my father had sold his hunters and taken to driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony. Surely that isn’t true—they’ve not lost money, have they?" "He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating. "He has become a total abstainer. Don’t look so aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him. A year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid, you know. She was thrown from the box-seat of a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago. We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her." She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man beside her.