They recognised each other. Ian looked his nephew up and down with a cool kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation. Gaston went straight to the castle. He asked for his uncle, and was told that he had gone to Lady Belward. He wandered to the library: it was empty. He lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold’s poems, opening at “Sohrab and Rustum,” read it with a quick-beating heart, and then came to “Tristram and Iseult.” He knew little of “that Arthur” and his knights of the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure of romance to him. In Tennyson, he had got no further than “Locksley Hall,” which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and “Maud,” which “was big in pathos.” The story and the metre of “Tristram and Iseult” beat in his veins. He got to his feet, and, standing before the window, repeated a verse aloud: “Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O hunter! and without a fear Thy golden-tassell’d bugle blow, And through the glades thy pasture take For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago.” He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open. He again repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician. He knew that they were right. They were hot with life--a life that was no more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be. He felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea, down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in with bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago. Bearding the Spaniards--what did he mean by that? He shut his eyes and saw a picture: A Moorish castle, men firing from the battlements under a blazing sun, a multitude of troops before a tall splendid-looking man, in armour chased with gold and silver, and fine ribbons flying. A woman was lifted upon the battlements. He saw the gold of her necklace shake on her flesh like sunlight on little waves. He heard a cry: At that moment some one said behind him: “You have your father’s romantic manner.” He quietly put down the book, and met the other’s eyes with a steady directness. “Your memory is good, sir.” “Less than thirty years--h’m, not so very long!” “Looking back--no. You are my father’s brother, Ian Belward?” “Your uncle Ian.” There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward’s manner. “Well, Uncle Ian, my father asked me to say that he hoped you would get as much out of life as he had, and that you would leave it as honest.” “Thank you. That is very like Robert. He loved making little speeches. It is a pity we did not pull together; but I was hasty, and he was rash. He had a foolish career, and you are the result. My mother has told me the story--his and yours.”