The two children in the early morning—it is just after sunrise—are laughing and crowing with the excitement of the forming _safari_ and the coming start. The three-year-old boy, Ambrose, is named after his grandfather; the baby girl has been called Sibyl at her mother’s request. In all probability Lucy had never even so much as suspected that there was more than cousinly affection between her husband and Lady Silchester: it would have taken something like ocular evidence to make her doubt Roger’s fidelity. At first Sibyl had frightened and humbled her, but during the last year of their association, at Engledene, she had been coolly kind and had shown something like gratitude for Lucy’s care of her ugly fretful little boy. Before Lucy had left to rejoin her husband in East Africa, Sibyl had said: "I expect you’ll have a lot more children. If you have another girl, call it by my name. I should like to be associated with a child of Roger’s. Promise? Very well then: in return I’ll give an eye to little John and fat Maud whilst you are in Africa. Indeed I cannot see why they shouldn’t move over here from Aldermaston, when your own people get tired of them; and share Clithy’s nursery.... At any rate come here on visits, and if they quarrel it will do Clithy a world of good. His nurses give him too much sense of his own importance." So there was at least this pleasant thing for them to look forward to, even though Lucy’s eyes were wet with tears at leaving Iraku. Engledene Lodge as well as Church Farm would be open to them. Sibyl, more ambitious than ever of cutting a dash, playing a part in modern history, rivalling Lady Feenix, revenging herself for snubs by the Brinsley clan, lived much in London and gave up Engledene to the quiet bringing-up of her only child. When she went down there it was to rest and repair her beauty, to transact humdrum estate business with Maurice Brentham. Except for the autumn shooting parties she entertained very little at Engledene. It was in Scotland and above all in London that she played the lavish hostess and sought to undermine Cabinets and bring a new recruit to the Opposition. She was now thirty-four, and when animated only looked twenty-six. Rumour had assigned her several love affairs, which out of England—on the Riviera, at Paris, at Rome—were said to have been carried to the borders of indiscretion. It had even been announced that "a marriage had been arranged and would shortly take place," etc., between Lady Silchester and Sir Elijah Tooley—but the announcement had been promptly contradicted, and a month after occurred the first resounding crack in the Tooley edifice....