"Won't you come to the point, Clare? It is a little hard to see----" "Oh, things are obvious enough--surely, Harry, you must see for yourself. People were ready to give you a warm welcome when you returned. I--we--all of us, were only too glad. But you repulsed us all. Why, on the very day after your arrival you were extremely--I am sorry, but there is no other word--discourteous to the Miss Ponsonbys. You have made your friends almost entirely amongst the fisher class, a strange thing, surely, for a Trojan to do, and you now, I believe, spend your evenings frequently in a low public-house resorted to by such persons--at any rate you have spent them neither here nor at the Club, the two obvious places. I am only mentioning these things because I think that you may not have seen that such matters--trivial as they may seem to you--reflect discredit, not only on yourself, but also, indirectly, on all of us." "You forget, Clare, that I have many old friends down at the Cove. They were there when I was a boy. The people in Pendragon have changed very largely, almost entirely. There is scarcely any one whom I knew twenty years ago; it is, I should have thought, quite natural that I should go to see my old friends again after so long an absence." He was trying to speak quietly and calmly. His heart was beating furiously, but he knew that if he once lost control, he would lose, too, his position. But, as he watched them, and saw their cold, unmoved attitude his anger rose; he had to keep it down with both hands clenched--it was only by remembering Robin that the effort was successful. "Natural to go and see them on your return--of course. But to return, to go continually, no. I cannot help feeling, Harry, that you have been a little selfish. That you have scarcely seen our side of the question. Things have changed in the last twenty years--changed enormously. We have seen them, studied them, and, I think, understood them. You come back and face them without any preparation; surely you cannot expect to understand them quite as we do." "This seems to me, I must confess, Clare, a great deal of concern about a very little matter. Surely I am not a person of such importance that a few visits to the Cove can ruin us socially?" "Ah! that is what you don't understand! Little things matter here. People watch, and are, I am afraid, only too ready to fasten on matters that do not concern them. Besides, it is not only the Cove--there are other things--there are, for instance, the Bethels."