With Edged Tools | Page 7

the breakfast-room. Sir John was in the midst of his toilet--a complicated affair, which, like other works of art, would not bear contemplation when incomplete.
"Tell him," said the uncompromising old gentleman, "that I will come down when I am ready."
He made a more careful toilet than usual, and finally came down in a gay tweed suit, of which the general effect was distinctly heightened by a pair of white gaiters. He was upright, trim, and perfectly determined. Jack noted that his clothes looked a little emptier than usual--that was all.
"Well," said the father, "I suppose we both made fools of ourselves last night."
"I have not yet seen you do that," replied the son, laying aside the morning paper which he had been reading.
Sir John smiled grimly. He hoped that Jack was right.
"Well," he added, "let us call it a difference of opinion."
"Yes."
Something in the monosyllable made the old gentleman's lips twitch nervously.
"I may mention," he said, with a dangerous suavity, "that I still hold to my opinion."
Jack Meredith rose, without haste. This, like the interview of the previous night, was conducted upon strictly high-bred and gentlemanly lines.
"And I to mine," he said. "That is why I took the liberty of calling at this early hour. I thought that perhaps we might effect some sort of a compromise."
"It is very good of you to make the proposal." Sir John kept his fingers away from his lips by an obvious exercise of self-control. "I am not partial to compromises: they savour of commerce."
Jack gave a queer, curt nod, and moved towards the door. Sir John extended his unsteady hand and rang the bell.
"Good-morning," he said.
"Graves," he added, to the servant who stood in the doorway, "when you have closed the door behind Mr. Meredith, bring up breakfast, if you please."
On the doorstep Jack Meredith looked at his watch. He had an appointment with Millicent Chyne at half-past eleven--an hour when Lady Cantourne might reasonably be expected to be absent at the weekly meeting of a society which, under the guise and nomenclature of friendship, busied itself in making servant girls discontented with their situations.
It was only eleven o'clock. Jack turned to the left, out of the quiet but fashionable street, and a few steps took him to Piccadilly. He went into the first jeweller's shop he saw, and bought a plain diamond ring. Then he walked on to keep his appointment with his affianced wife.
Miss Millicent Chyne was waiting for him with that mixture of maidenly feelings of which the discreet novelist only details a selection. It is not customary to dwell upon thoughts of vague regret at the approaching withdrawal of a universal admiration--at the future necessity for discreet and humdrum behaviour quite devoid of the excitement that lurks in a double meaning. Let it, therefore, be ours to note the outward signs of a very natural emotion. Miss Chyne noted them herself with care, and not without a few deft touches to hair and dress. When Jack Meredith entered the room she was standing near the window, holding back the curtain with one hand and watching, half shyly, for his advent.
What struck her at once was his gravity; and he must have seen the droop in her eyes, for he immediately assumed the pleasant, half- reckless smile which the world of London society had learnt to associate with his name.
He played the lover rather well, with that finish and absence of self-consciousness which only comes from sincerity; and when Miss Chyne found opportunity to look at him a second time she was fully convinced that she loved him. She was, perhaps, carried off her feet a little--metaphorically speaking, of course--by his evident sincerity. At that moment she would have done anything that he had asked her. The pleasures of society, the social amenities of aristocratic life, seemed to have vanished suddenly into thin air, and only love was left. She had always known that Jack Meredith was superior in a thousand ways to all her admirers. More gentlemanly, more truthful, honester, nobler, more worthy of love. Beyond that, he was cleverer, despite a certain laziness of disposition--more brilliant and more amusing. He had always been to a great extent the chosen one; and yet it was with a certain surprise and sense of unreality that she found what she had drifted into. She saw the diamond ring, and looked upon it with the beautiful emotions aroused by those small stones in the female breast; but she did not seem to recognise her own finger within the golden hoop.
It was at this moment--while she dwelt in this new unreal world-- that he elected to tell her of his quarrel with his father. And when one walks through a maze of unrealities nothing seems to come amiss or to cause surprise. He