“Cheap and nasty!” she retorted. “If you had offered me such hideous rubbish, I’d have sent it straight to the dustbin!” CHAPTER V CLOUDS It was an abnormally hot summer; all London lay at the mercy of a fierce and fiery sun; grass in the parks was brown, plants drooped in window boxes, and there was not even a little breeze to stir the soft dust under foot, nor one hopeful cloud in the blue vault overhead. But in the sky of Douglas Shafto’s existence dark and threatening clouds were gathering; the largest of these was a haunting fear that his mother intended to marry her admirer, Manasseh Levison—the prosperous dealer in furniture and antiquities, a wealthy man, who owned, besides his business, a fine mansion at Tooting; this he had closed after the death of Mrs. Levison, when he had repaired to “Malahide” for society and distraction—bidden there by his lively old friend, Mrs. Moses Galli. The shrivelled little miserly widow was his confidante, and, for the illumination of Mrs. Shafto, she had drawn glowing pictures of Khartoum House, and outlined an imposing sketch of the luxuries awaiting its future mistress. It was noticed as a significant fact that when Mrs. Shafto and Madame Galli went to Eastbourne for a week (at Mrs. Shafto’s expense), they had been joined at the Grand Hotel by Manasseh Levison, who treated them to a special banquet, enlivened by the finest brands of champagne—and had subsequently motored them back to town. The idea that Levison should usurp his father’s place overwhelmed Douglas with horror and shame; the prospect was intolerable; so were other matters; for instance, his monotonous office life, the want of variety and fresh air. For exercise, he belonged to a neighbouring gymnasium, but this was not sufficient for a country-bred, energetic young man, in his twenty-fourth year. As for the variety of amusements that satisfied and delighted his brother clerks, they left him cold. He was sensible of a tormenting thirst for a far-away different life—and its chances, sick of this existence, of continually going round and round, like a squirrel in a cage. A change of surroundings and scene, or a spice of adventure, was what he longed for—as eagerly and as hopelessly as some fallen wayfarer in a desert land. His mother’s flinty attitude and hostile nagging had frozen a naturally affectionate disposition, and Shafto passed several years of his youth without one single ray of woman’s love, until generous Mrs. Malone had come forward and installed him in her heart. His usual routine was breakfast at eight, office at nine, lunch twelve-thirty, freedom at six, dinner at seven-thirty. On Saturday afternoons he was expected at “Monte Carlo”—to join the family at tennis and high tea—and here, over the little red villa, brooded yet another cloud! Cossie, the gushing and good-natured, had been given what her brother brutally termed “the chuck” by her young man; he had taken on another girl, and his