"No--you sulk." Denise was venting her irritation on the boy. Big Cyril was thinking. He thought quietly, and, equally quietly, acted. Denise must not be weak enough to go on paying for one winter's kindness. "Say sorry and mumsie will give us jam," said Sir Cyril. "Didn't drop it a pupus, dads." The clear baby eyes met Sir Cyril's, filled with the mystical reasoning of childhood. "Not a pupus--the dog joggled me, dad." Sir Cyril grinned gently; Denise muttered something, and he helped the boys to egg. Cyril, forgetting the wisdom of silence, wished to know why hens wouldn't lay eggs scrambled, an' save cook's trouble, and Cecil suggested telling the fowl-woman. "I am going to Insminton, Cyril. I have to get some things." "Yes. I'll come in with you. No one will be here before one." Denise flushed; then she must go in the afternoon, and the bank would be shut. She sat fidgeting, afraid to the bottom of her shallow soul of the big-jawed man she had married. She had seen him angry--knew the depths of his cold anger, and his ideas of justice. The hard Blakeney pictured faces frowned down upon her from the dining-room walls; a race of human steamrollers, driven by the power of determination; diving aside respectfully for what they realized to be the rightful traffic of the road of life, but coming on mercilessly to grind what needed grinding. "Coming, Den?" Sir Cyril called from the door. Denise came reluctantly; she must pretend to have some errands, for she knew she would get no opportunity now of going to the bank. Her husband would do his own work quickly, then drive her about, waiting for her. The big drapers scored by an order for silk and for table linen. Mr Holmes, the grocer, rubbing his fat chin, decided that sardines must be about to be used as fish by the great, seeing that he had supplied a dozen boxes the day before and was asked for another dozen now. "Finished, Den?" "Yes. I think I've forgotten something, though." Denise was driven home, answering questions, but not speaking, frightened, and too visibly ill at ease. "H'm!" said Sir Cyril to himself. He went to his study to write, stayed there until the luncheon gong rang, came out to find the first arrivals in the morning-room, and to see Denise, her colour high, hurrying in. "I'm so sorry I'm late. I had to run over to the Vicarage to give the vicaress some books for her club. I forgot them this morning." Denise had been to the bank, extracted two hundred pounds in notes from a beaming manager. She came in a little nervously, looking aside at Sir Cyril. The big man would have made a good detective. His hard eyes narrowed a little, his big chin shot out. Denise was not in the least likely to have remembered the books for the vicar's wife without some other motive. Without the faintest suspicion of Denise in his mind, he summed it all up.