He rose and paced the room. War disintegrates, but not to this degree, not to the degree of dissipating the tradition of the Hepplestalls. He, the Head, the Chief Trustee, had meditated treachery, but only (he faced the portraits reassuringly), only speculatively, only in pursuit of a train of thought started by an impertinent letter, which he had not torn up. No, he had not torn it up, he had preserved it as laughable proof of the insensibility to finer issues of these financial people. He would show it to his brothers or to Rupert: it would become quite a family jest. To Rupert? Indeed he ought to show it first to Rupert, the future Head. He could, jokingly, good-humoredly, use it as a lever to make Rupert conscious of his responsibilities, he could say “if you don’t come quickly, there’ll be no Hepplestall’s for you to come to. Look at this letter. You and I, between us, have controlling interest; we could sell the firm, and the rest of the Board could not effectively prevent us. I’m joking, of course. That sort of thing isn’t in the tradition of the Hepplestalls. And, by the way, speaking of the tradition, when are we to expect you amongst us?” Something like that; not a bit a business letter, not serious; genial and avuncular; but there was, manifestly, a Rupert affair, and this impudent inquiry of the eminent chartered accountants was the very means to bring the affair to a head. The boy was exceeding the license allowed even to one who had been in the war from the beginning; it was nearly a year since his demobilization. William thought that his letter would seem more friendly if he addressed it from the Hall and looked in his desk for notepaper. He seemed to have run out of the supply of private notepaper he kept in his desk; then the spinning manager interrupted him. He put the letter in his pocket again: he would write to Rupert after lunch at the Hall. He was busy for some time with the spinning manager, and went home convinced that the only serious thought he had ever had about the letter in his pocket was of its opportuneness in the matter of Rupert. It was nothing beyond a plausible excuse for writing to Rupert essentially on another subject and the figures in his note-book were not a traitor’s secret but the meaningless result of a middle-aged gentleman’s mental gymnastics. He lunched alone with Gertrude and, “I’m writing to Rupert to-day,” he said incautiously. “Oh?” She bristled. “Why?”