"The damned philandering puppy," he muttered to himself, as he came out from the plantation and set the gray to gallop more swiftly than before over the common land. He paid no attention to the wild commoners, who seeing the baronet return at this furious pace supposed that he had been made aware of their depredations upon the turf and ran to hide from his wrath in the dark bordering beeches. He paid no attention to the geese that flapped across his path except to give the gelding a cruel jab when he swerved in his stride. It was barely two o'clock when Sir Richard reached the Hall, having for the first time in thirty-five years failed at his yearly task of riding round the confines of his ten thousand acres. So deeply enraged was he with his son's conduct that he neither sent up to warn his wife of his early return nor even inquired after her headache. He shut himself in his big library, pacing up and down among the rows of books, the titles of which wrote themselves upon his mind more rapidly but perhaps not less intelligibly than they had written themselves on the minds of generations of Flowers. Sir Richard glared at the busts of poets, orators, and philosophers posed with such unconcern, with such coolness and such contempt above the cornice of the shelves. If Homer, Demosthenes and Plato had not been out of reach, the baronet would have swept them from their perch to the ground. Instead he pulled the bell rope violently. "When Mr. Edward comes in," he told the butler, "I wish to see him at once." "Very good, Sir Richard," said the butler apprehensively, and as the old man went out of the library Sir Richard wondered if his son's conduct was already a topic in the steward's room and servants' hall. In the middle of his rage there was a tap at the door, and his wife entered to a gruff summons. Lady Flower was a small, dainty woman whose smallness and daintiness was accentuated by the vast crinolines of the moment. Although she was almost fifty, her black hair lacked the faintest film of gray, her ivory skin showed few lines. To Sir Richard she seemed the same as when thirty-one years ago he had married her. She never came into a room but his mind went back to the first sight of her dressed in a short flounced skirt with her black hair tied high with roses and ribands; and it seemed not she but her clothes which had grown older and more stately with years. "My dear, what is the matter?" she asked. "What has upset you?" The distressed father poured out his tale. "But aren't you taking it all too seriously?" his wife suggested. "Edward has only found a Graziella at Barton. _Il y a toujours des petits amoureux...._" "For God's sake don't talk French!" Sir Richard burst in. "There's nothing like French for giving an unpleasant turn to the conversation."