Immediately on my arrival, I was shown to my bedroom to dress. I began to have the sense of “belonging.” The windows looked out on a sunken garden, all ablaze with stocks, snap-dragon, sweet-william, and all manner of old-world flowers. In the scented stillness I could hear the splash of a fountain playing in the center. Beyond that were other gardens, Dutch and Italian, divided by red walls and terraces. Beyond them all, through the shadowed trees one caught glimpses of a lake, with swans and gaily-painted water-fowl sailing like toy-yachts upon its surface. When the servant had left me, I commenced to dress leisurely. After that I sat down, waiting for the gong to sound. I wondered if this was the room where my mother had slept. How much my father’s love must have meant to her that she should have sacrificed so much prosperous certainty to share his insecure fortunes. Yet, as I looked back, it was a smiling face that I remembered, with no marks of misgiving or regret upon it. I did not meet my grandfather until the meal was about to be served. I think he had planned our first encounter carefully, so that our conduct might be restrained by the presence of servants. His greeting was that of any host to any guest. Our conversation at dinner was on impersonal, intellectual topics--the kind that is carried on between well-bred persons who are thrown together for the moment and are compelled to be polite to one another. The only way in which he betrayed nervousness was by crumbling his bread with his left hand while he was conversing. Finding that I was not anxious to force matters, he became more at his ease. He addressed me as Mr. Cardover, with stiff and kindly courtesy. We took our cigars out on to the terrace to watch the last of the sunset. He was talking of Oxford, and the changes which had taken place in the University since he was an undergraduate. “I believe you are a Fellow of Lazarus, Mr. Cardover?” “Yes.” “I had a nephew there a few years ago, Lord Halloway, the son of my poor brother-in-law, the Earl of Lovegrove. You may know him.” “Only by hearsay. He was before my time.” My grandfather knocked the ash from his cigar. Then, speaking in a low voice, very deliberately, “I’m afraid you have heard nothing good about him. He has not turned out well.” He paused: I felt that I was being tested. When I kept silent, he continued, “I have no son. He was to have followed me.” Shortly afterwards he excused himself, saying that he was an old man and retired early to bed.