I found my sister Agatha waiting for me in the library. I had telegraphed to her from Southampton. She was expensively dressed in grey silk, and wore the family diamonds. We exchanged the family kiss and the usual incoherent greetings of our race. She expressed her delight at my restoration to health and gave me satisfactory tidings of Tom Durrell, her husband, of the children, and of our sister Jane. Then she shook her head at me, and made me feel like a naughty little boy. This I resented. Being the head of the family, I had always encouraged the deferential attitude which my sisters, dear right-minded things, had naturally assumed from babyhood. “Oh, Simon, what a time you've given us!” She had never spoken to me like this in her life. “That's nothing, my dear Agatha,” said I just a bit tartly, “to the time I've given myself. I'm sorry for you, but I think you ought to be a little sorry for me.” “I am. More sorry than I can say. Oh, Simon, how could you?” “How could I what?” I cried, unwontedly regardless of the refinements of language. “Mix yourself up in this dreadful affair?” “My dear girl,” said I, “if you had got mixed up in a railway collision, I shouldn't ask you how you managed to do it. I should be sorry for you and feel your arms and legs and inquire whether you had sustained any internal injuries.” She is a pretty, spare woman with a bird-like face and soft brown hair just turning grey; and as good-hearted a little creature as ever adored five healthy children and an elderly baronet with disastrous views on scientific farming. “Dear old boy,” she said in milder accents, “I didn't mean to be unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked Bingley”--Bingley is my housekeeper--“whether I could stay to dinner.” “That's good of you--but this magnificence----?” “I'm going on later to the Foreign Office reception.” “Then you do still mingle with the great and gorgeous?” I said. “What do you mean? Why shouldn't I?” I laughed, suspecting rightly that my sisters' social position had not been greatly imperilled by the profligacy of their scandal-bespattered brother. “What are people saying about me?” I asked suddenly. She made a helpless gesture. “Can't you guess? You have told us the facts, and, of course, we believe you; we have done our best to spread abroad the correct version--but you know what people are. If they're told they oughtn't to believe the worst, they're disappointed and still go on believing it so as to comfort themselves.” “You cynical little wretch!” said I. “But it's true,” she urged. “And, after all, even if they were well disposed, the correct version makes considerable demands on their faith. Even Letty Farfax--” “I know! I know!” said I. “Letty Farfax is typical. She would love to be on the side of the angels, but as she wouldn't meet the best people there, she ranges herself with the other party.”