Boyish as Cyril looked, he was seventeen, a lad of innate character, of rapidly-developing force and intellect. Some degree of nervous weakness existed still, hampering the capabilities of mind and body, but the weakness was being fast mastered, as the bracing influences of a good school gradually counteracted the enervating influences of home. Hitherto his natural gentleness of disposition, with a good-natured readiness to yield on small points—a readiness more often masculine than feminine—had prevented struggles; but the state of things could not last thus indefinitely. Sooner or later, as Mrs. Kennedy would have said, the tadpole is sure to part with its tail. The change was not likely to begin on Miss Devereux's side. A mother is usually far quicker than a father to realise that her children, especially her boys, are growing up; and she more seldom makes the blunder of keeping on childish restrictions too long. But Miss Devereux was not a mother, was not even a woman of natural motherliness. She was only a fidgety and nervous single lady, very ignorant of life, still more ignorant of human nature; and she was quite unable to realise that her spoilt darling was big enough to stand alone. She was just as eager to cosset, to pet, and to control, with the lad of seventeen as she had been with the child of ten. Since the change would not begin on her side, it had to begin on Cyril's side; and this mode too often means an accompanying struggle. No doubt the change had been long brewing. Things do not come about in this world without previous preparation. When a lightning spark flashes from cloud to cloud, it does so with startling suddenness yet the electrical condition of the clouds has implied a gradual working-up to the point of discharge. When nations burst into open war, a period of grumbling and growling has been gone through previously. What the newspapers describe as "strained relations" between two kingdoms had been for some time the condition of affairs between aunt and nephew; only nobody knew it except themselves, and perhaps not even themselves. Like many easy-tempered people, who from inborn sweetness and dislike of a "fuss," will yield on a hundred lesser points, Cyril could be aroused to tough resistance on the hundred-and-first point. An occasional fight in his childhood might have warned Sybella; but such fights had been rare, and she had almost found him amenable to petting. On the whole, this factor in his character had not pressed itself on Sybella's notice. He was indeed only now beginning to awake to the dawning possibilities of manhood. Far greater awakenings might come to him in the future; but this at the moment seemed great. It took him by surprise as well as her.