Peter soon picked up his strength at Hamingburgh. Three weeks passed and he thought of returning to London. Then came a letter from Marbury.

His uncle had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and Marbury was to stand at once in a contested by-election. He lightly but cordially asked Peter to come and stay with him through the fight and meet some of the distinguished people it would draw into the constituency.

Peter eagerly accepted. Next day he met Marbury at York, leaving the train to avoid a tedious slow journey of forty miles.

Lord Haversham\'s principal seat was at Highbury Towers, a lonely house on the edge of a moor. The nearest town was ten miles away.

It was a fortress of civilisation planted in a wilderness. In a bad winter, with snow lying deep, it was sometimes cut off for days from the world outside.

"There\'s something impudent about the place," said Marbury, as the car rushed over the moors. "It flies in the face of Nature. The Towers is the most comfortable home in England, and it is in a desert."

"A very beautiful desert," said Peter. He was[Pg 185] feasting on the superb line of a moor-end, red with the heather.

"You must see it in the winter. I went through last election with my uncle. It was December, and we did well if we managed to keep half our appointments."

"Tell me about your uncle."

"He\'s dying, Peter." Marbury conveyed this as a simple fact. He did not intend an effect.

"You mean that he\'s very ill," suggested Peter.

"I mean that he\'s dying. The doctors give him six months or a year in Egypt. Here they allow him till the autumn."

"When is he going away?"

"He isn\'t going away," answered Marbury. "He thinks it worth while to die at home." Again Marbury spoke without insisting in the least on the heroic implication of his words.

"But six months of life and the sun," protested Peter.

"Six months is not long. We have lived at Highbury for a thousand years. Besides, my uncle wants things to go smoothly when he dies. He is posting me up in the estate—all the small traditional things."

Marbury talked of these things with a curious tranquillity. He simply recorded them. He fell very silent; and at the journey\'s end looked with interest at the large old house at which they had arrived.

Marbury took Peter upstairs to a room beside[Pg 186] his own, and left to dress quickly for dinner. He would come back for Peter and show him the way down. When Peter was ready, he stood for a few minutes at the window. He looked on to a terrace and a garden which ended abruptly and fell suddenly to the moor. At the end of the terrace, magnificently poised and fronting desolation, was the copy of a famous statue by a contemporary sculptor, audaciously asserting the triumph of art—the figure of a naked youth superbly defiant.

Soon Marbury joined Peter at the window and put a hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"That\'s what I mean," he said, following Peter\'s look towards the statue in silhouette against the moor, "when I say that this place seems to fly in Nature\'s face. He\'s insolent, don\'t you think? He\'s looking over thirty miles of moor—not a house between himself and the open sea. In the winter the snow piles up against him, and storms bang into him from the German Ocean. He is the last exquisite word of the twentieth century asserting our mastery over all that."

Marbury waved his arm towards the open moor, and laughed an apology:

"He usually works me up like that. Let\'s have some dinner."

They went down, and Peter was made acquainted with many people whose names he tried to remember. His mind was whirling with impressions, unable to settle upon anything definite[Pg 187] till, at dinner, he had had time to recover from a sensation of being too much honoured. This sensation had invaded him at being introduced by Marbury to an exquisite young woman.

"Peter," he said, "this is my sister. Look after him, Mary, and tell him who everybody is."

Then Marbury had disappeared, leaving Peter shyly rising to her light chatter.

"The house is packed, and there are beds at the home-farm," she said as they sat to the table. "Everybody is rushing to help Antony."

"Antony?" Peter echoed in a puzzled way.

"Don\'t you know his name?" she asked, looking towards Marbury.

"I\'m afraid not," Peter confessed.

"But he called you Peter."

"Everybody calls me Peter."

"Why does everybody do that?"

"I don\'t know. Everybody does."

Peter was beginning to enjoy himself. Lady Mary smiled into his frank eyes, liking the direct way in which they looked at her.

They paused as Haversham came in to dinner. His empty chair always stood at the head of the table. Sometimes he was unable at the last moment to come down, but he never allowed anyone to wait or to inquire.

Peter looked at him with interest. He was yet at the prime, but grey and frail. His features were proud and delicate, his voice gravely penetrating. He was too far from Peter for his [Pg 188]conversation to be heard, but he talked with lit face and a frequent smile. Sometimes, however, he fell silent, and Peter thought he detected the strained inward look of one struggling with physical pain.

"You don\'t know Uncle Eustace?" said Lady Mary, following Peter\'s look.

"Not yet."

"He will do you good."

"Antony was telling me about him on the way down."

They talked through dinner of indifferent things. The accent of conscious culture which Peter now cordially hated was missing. Yet the talk was alive—happily vivid and agreeable. No one seemed anxious to make an effort or to press home a conviction. Nor was Peter aware of words anxiously picked. He was unable yet to name his impression. He only knew that he talked more frankly of small things than he had talked before.

He noticed in a series of pleasant discoveries how beautiful was the setting of their talk. Lord Haversham had at Highbury brought the art of fine living to perfection. He had filled the place with costly things, without anywhere suggesting unreasonable luxury. Highbury Towers grew upon the visitor. Even as a guest began to wonder why he never seemed to have dined so well and been les............