With a Scots young man such a position had been perfectly possible. Tietjens had been able to go to his fair, ample, saintly mother in her morning-room and say: "Look here, mother, that fellow Macmaster! He'll need a little money to get through the University," and his mother would answer: "Yes, my dear. How much?" With an English young man of the lower orders that would have left a sense of class obligation. With Macmaster it just didn't. During Tietjens' late trouble--for four months before Tietjens' wife had left him to go abroad with another man--Macmaster had filled a place that no other man could have filled. For the basis of Christopher Tietjens' emotional existence was a complete taciturnity--at any rate as to his emotions. As Tietjens saw the world, you didn't "talk." Perhaps you didn't even think about how you felt. And, indeed, his wife's flight had left him almost completely without emotions that he could realise, and he had not spoken more than twenty words at most about the event. Those had been mostly to his father, who, very tall, very largely built, silver-haired and erect, had drifted, as it were, into Macmaster's drawing-room in Gray's Inn, and after five minutes of silence had said: "You will divorce?" Christopher had answered: "No! No one but a blackguard would ever submit a woman to the ordeal of divorce." Mr. Tietjens had suggested that, and after an interval had asked: "You will permit her to divorce you?" He had answered: "If she wishes it. There's the child to be considered." Mr. Tietjens said: "You will get her settlement transferred to the child?" Christopher answered: "If it can be done without friction." Mr. Tietjens had commented only: "Ah!" Some minutes later he had said: "Your mother's very well." Then: "That motor-plough _didn't_ answer," and then: "I shall be dining at the club." Christopher said: "May I bring Macmaster in, sir? You said you would put him up." Mr. Tietjens answered: "Yes, do. Old General ffolliott will be there. He'll second him. He'd better make his acquaintance." He had gone away. Tietjens considered that his relationship with his father was an almost perfect one. They were like two men in the club--the _only_ club; thinking so alike that there was no need to talk. His father had spent a great deal of time abroad before succeeding to the estate. When, over the moors, he went into the industrial town that he owned, he drove always in a coach-and-four. Tobacco smoke had never been known inside Groby Hall: Mr. Tietjens had twelve pipes filled every morning by his head gardener and placed in rose bushes down the drive. These he smoked during the day. He farmed a good deal of his own land; had sat for Holdernesse from 1876 to 1881, but had not presented himself for election after the re-distribution of seats; he was patron of eleven livings; rode to hounds every now and then, and shot fairly regularly. He had three other sons and two daughters, and was now sixty-one.