revealed the secret weakness which all these years had underlain the smooth, firm surface of their relations. Each, it appeared, could do perfectly well without the other, and only feel the separation as a matter for indignant pride. The interloper, meanwhile, was quite unconscious of the hidden passions that were seething round him. Ivor Restormel had a happy temperament that only looked for the best in everything. Reasons and explanations did not interest him, nor had he much subtlety to discern any animosity that did not take the form of a blow in the eye. So long as he was not made to enter the smoke-haunted rooms of Brakelond he was inclined simply and wholly to enjoy himself. What it all meant he had no idea, nor what he had done to attract so smooth and pleasant a life as seemed to be opening out before him. Occasionally he had a very faint suspicion that Lady Gundred, for some reason, did not entirely approve of him. But, then, she was always so mild and remote in manner, so it must only be his fancy; after all, he had done absolutely nothing to annoy her; and, anyway, what was the good of bothering? So he took the pleasures that the gods provided, without question or cavil, and began to enjoy the surroundings to which he had been so suddenly, so unexpectedly, transplanted. He had inherited a love of beauty, comfort, calm; the change from a penurious life spent between a third-rate Oxford college and a dingy little house in the Banbury Road, among people no less distasteful than the lives they led--the change from all this to the large serenity of Brakelond was restful and delicious in the extreme. Here voices were never raised in queribund tones; here all the little difficulties of life were kept in oblivion, and existence went on oiled wheels along a gentle, placid course. Lady Gundred might be a little chilly and undemonstrative, but, at any rate, she was always smooth; she never fussed or grew peevish, was never worried about the details of housekeeping. Ivor Restormel loved the unquestioning quiet of his new life. As for his host, well, there he was altogether baffled.