* * * * * He dressed hurriedly and came down to the drawing-room, with some thought in the back of his mind that he would, throughout the evening, be the most charming person possible. He found, however, at once a check.... Under a full blaze of light Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah were sitting, waiting for the others. The old man, his silver buckles and white hair gleaming, sat, perched high in his chair, one hand raised before the fire, behind it the firelight shining as behind a faint screen. Aunt Sarah, very stiff, upright and slim, was the priestess before the Trenchard temple. They, both of them, gazed into the fire. They did not turn their heads as Mark entered; they had watched his entry in the Mirror. He shouted Good-evening, but they did not hear him. He sat down, began a sentence. “Really a sharp touch in the air—” then abandoned it, seizing ‘Blackwood’ as a weapon of defence. Behind his paper, he knew that their eyes were upon him. He felt them peering into ‘Blackwood’s’ cover; they pierced the pages, they struck him in the face. There was complete silence in the room. The place was thick with burning eyes. They were reflected, he felt, in the Mirror, again and again. “How they hate me!” he thought. CHAPTER III KATHERINE Katherine Trenchard’s very earliest sense of morality had been that there were God, the Trenchard’s and the Devil—that the Devil wished very much to win the Trenchards over to His side, but that God assured the Trenchards that if only they behaved well He would not let them go—and, for this, Troy had burnt, Carthage been razed to the ground, proud kings driven from their thrones and humbled to the dust, plague, pestilence, and famine had wrought their worst.... The Trenchards were, indeed, a tremendous family, and it was little wonder that the Heavenly Powers should fight for their alliance. In the county of Glebeshire, where Katherine had spent all her early years, Trenchards ran like spiders’ webs, up and down the lanes and villages. In Polchester, the Cathedral city, there were Canon Trenchard and his family, old Colonel Trenchard, late of the Indian army, the Trenchards of Polhaze and the Trenchards of Rothin Place—all these in one small town. There were Trenchards at Rasselas and Trenchards (poor and rather unworthy Trenchards) at Clinton St. Mary. There was one Trenchard (a truculent and gout-ridden bachelor) at Polwint—all of these in the immediate neighbourhood of Katherine’s home. Of course they were important to God....