"Poor old chap, I tell you, I've had him very much on my mind, Louise, these last few days," he had said to his wife, that morning, at breakfast. "It's only decent charity to see him through. I hear he's looking uncommonly hipped. You thought him rather queer, you know, the day he had luncheon here. Mercy for him the old gentleman died as soon as he did--perfectly mad, too, I hear, and an infernal temper. It's enough to make any one jumpy to be dancing attendance on such a deathbed as that day after day; and in that gloomy, ghostly house too. I couldn't have done it, I know, without getting most frightfully broken up. We must try to get him over here for a day or two. Write him a nice note, will you, Louise; it would be awfully good of you, and I will do my best to bring him back with me to-night. Ought to be quiet to-morrow, I suppose, for the sake of appearances; but the day after let's have General Powys and the Westons to dinner. I want to rattle him up a bit." But neither Mrs. Bellingham's neatly worded note, nor her husband's hospitable entreaties, moved Laurence Rivers. He had quite other fish to fry. All he asked for was solitude and sunset; and his courtesy was slightly perfunctory and formal in consequence--so much so, indeed, that on his return Jack Bellingham remarked to his wife:-- "Rivers always was such a good-hearted, sensible sort of fellow, that it's hardly likely coming into this property would turn his head. He's above any vulgarity of that kind. All the same, he really was curiously stand-offish to everybody to-day. The Archdeacon meant to make an afternoon of it, and was a little bit huffed, I think. Rivers was perfectly civil, only he gave us pretty clearly to understand there was no call for any of us to dawdle. I don't know, but somehow I tell you, Louise, I don't quite like his look. We shall see. It would be an awful pity if he followed in the footsteps of the late lamented and turned out a crank." "I know it," Mrs. Bellingham replied calmly. "But you omit Virginia. I have never seen a woman less likely to tolerate a crank as her husband than Virginia."