tour of inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."

"Would you like to now?"

In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so literally or promptly.

"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.

"Afraid?"

"Your father and mother...."

"Would you if I were left an orphan?"

"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in joke."

Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a menacing angle.

"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.

"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."

I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted violence, had seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose at Whitsun.

"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to take me through the Bay."

"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable family of two.

"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping. "The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."

"I can imagine worse fates."

"For her? or for me?"

"Either or both."

"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll adopt me, I'll introduce you."

"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon Court improving my acquaintance with her."

Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.

"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my guardian...."

"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents to decide. You can guess my feelings."

I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the following night.

"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got a book?"

I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the head.

"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.

Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble, nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory, but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.

It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this date—to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant, Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my first glimpse of Sylvia....

Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil and excitement of the following six months.

I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.

CHAPTER IToC

WAR À OUTRANCE