THEY had been at Wren's End nearly three weeks, and sometimes Jan wondered if she appeared to Tony as unlike her own conception of herself as Tony's of his father was unlike what she had pictured him.

She knew Hugo Tancred to be dishonest, shifty, and wholly devoid of a sense of honour, but she had up till quite lately always thought of him as possessing a lazy sort of good-nature.

Tony was changing this view.

He was not yet at all talkative, but every now and then when he was alone with her he became frank and communicative, as reserved people often will when suddenly they let themselves go. And his very simplicity gave force to his revelations.

During their last year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father and mother.

Jan talked constantly to the children of their mother. Her portraits, Anthony's paintings and sketches, were all over the house, in every variety of happy pose. One of the best was hung at the foot of Tony's cot. The gentle blue eyes seemed to follow him in wistful benediction, and alone in bed at night he often thought of her, and of his home in India. It was, then, quite natural that he should talk of them to this Auntie Jan who had evidently loved his mother well; and from Tony Jan learned a good deal more about her brother-in-law than she had ever heard from his wife.

Tony loved to potter about with his aunt in the garden. She worked really hard, for there was much to do, and he tried his best to assist, often being a very great hindrance; but she never sent him away, for she desired above all things to gain his confidence.

One day after a hard half-hour's weeding, when Tony had wasted much time by pulling up several sorts of the wrong thing, Jan felt her temper getting edgy, so they sat down to rest upon one of the many convenient seats to be found at Wren's End. Anthony hated a garden where you couldn't sit comfortably and smoke, wheresoever the prospect was pleasing.

Tony sat down too, looking almost rosy after his labours.

He didn't sit close and cuddly, as little Fay would have done, but right at the other end of the seat, where he could stare at her. Every day was bringing Tony more surely to the conclusion that "he liked to look at" his aunt.

"You like Meg, don't you?" he said.

"No," Jan shook her head. "I don't like her. I love her; which is quite a different thing."

"Do you like people and love them?"

"I like some people—a great many people—then there are others, not so many, that I love—you're one of them."

"Is Fay?"

"Certainly, dear little Fay."

"And Peter?"

For a moment Jan hesitated. With heightened colour she met Tony's grave, searching eyes. Above everything she desired to be always true and sincere with him, that he might, as on that first night in England, feel that he "believed" her. "I have every reason to love Mr. Ledgard," she said slowly: "he was so wonderfully kind to all of us." She was determined to be loyal to Peter with poor Fay's children. Jan hated ingratitude. To have said she only liked Peter must have given Tony the impression that she was both forgetful and ungrateful. She would not risk that even though she might risk misunderstanding of another kind if he ever repeated her words to anybody else.

Her heart beat rather faster than was comfortable, and she was thankful that she and Tony were alone.

"Who do you like?" he asked.

"Nearly everybody; the people in the village, our good neighbours ... Can't you see the difference yourself? Now, you love your dear Mummy and you like ... say, William——"

"No," Tony said firmly, "I love William. I don't think," he went on, "I like people ... much. Either I love them like you said, or I don't care about them at all ... or I hate them."

"That," said Jan, "is a mistake. It's no use to hate people."

"But if you feel like it ... I hate people if they cheat me."

"But who on earth would cheat you? What do you mean?"

"Once," said Tony, and by the monotonous, detached tone of his voice Jan knew he was going to talk about his father, "my Daddie asked me if I'd like to see smoke come out of his ears ... an' he said: 'Put your hand here on me and watch very careful.'" Tony pointed to Jan's chest. "I put my hand there and I watched and watched an' he hurt me with the end of his cigar. There's the mark!" He held out a grubby little hand, back uppermost, for Jan's inspection, and there, sure enough, was the little round white scar.

"And what did you do?" she asked.

"I bit him."

"Oh, Tony, how dreadful!"

"I shouldn't of minded so much if he'd really done it—the smoke out of his ears, I mean; but not one teeniest little puff came. I watched so careful ... He cheated me."

Jan said nothing. What could she say? Hot anger burned in her heart against Hugo. She could have bitten him herself.

"Peter was there," Tony went on, "and Peter said it served him right."

"Yes," said Jan, grasping at this straw, "but what did Peter say to you?"

"He said, 'Sahibs don't cry and sahibs don't bite,' and if I was a sahib I mustn't do it, so I don't. I don't bite people often."

"I should hope not; besides, you know, sometimes quite good-natured people will do things in fun, never thinking it will hurt."

Tony gazed gloomily at Jan. "He cheated me," he repeated. "He said he would make it come out of his ears, and it didn't. He didn't like me—that's why."

"I don't think you ought to say that, and be so unforgiving. I expect Daddie forgot all about your biting him directly, and yet you remember what he did after this long time."

Poor Jan did try so hard to be fair.

"I wasn't afraid of him," Tony went on, as though he hadn't heard, "not really. Mummy was. She was drefully afraid. He said he'd whip me because I was so surly, and she was afraid he would ... I knew he wouldn't, not unless he could do it some cheaty way, and you can't whip people that way. But it frightened Mummy. She used to send me away when he came...."

Tony paused and knitted his brows, then suddenly he smiled. "But I always came back very quick, because I knew she wanted me, and I liked to look at him. He liked Fay, I suppose he liked to look at her, so do I. Nobody wants to look at me ... much ... except Mummy."

"I do," Jan said hastily. "I like to look at you just every bit as much as I like to look at Fay. I think you care rather too much what people look like, Tony."

"It does matter a lot," Tony said obstinately.

"Other things matter much more. Courage and kindness and truth and honesty. Look at Mr. Ledgard—he's not what you'd call a beautiful person, and yet I'm sure we all like to look at him."

"Sometimes you say Peter, and sometimes Mr. Ledgard. Why?"

Again Jan's heart gave that queer, uncomfortable jump. She certainly always thought of him as Peter. Quite unconsciously she occasionally spoke of him as Peter. Meg had observed this, but, unlike Tony, made no remark.

"Why?" Tony repeated.

"I suppose," Jan mumbled feebly, "it's because I hear the rest of you do it. I've no sort of right to."

"Auntie Jan," Tony said earnestly. "What is a devil?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, Tony," Jan replied, with the utmost sincerity.

"It isn't anything very nice, is it, or nice to look at?"

"It might be," said Jan, with Scottish caution.

"Daddie used to call me a surly little devil—when I used to come back because Mummy was frightened ... she was always frightened when he talked about money, and he did it a lot ... When he saw me, he would say: 'Wot you doing here, you surly little devil—listening, eh?'" Tony's youthful voice took on such a snarl that Jan positively jumped, and put out her hand to stop him. "'I'll give you somefin to listen to....'"

"Tony, Tony, couldn't you try to forget all that?"

Tony shook his head. "No! I shall never forget it, because, you see, it's all mixed up with Mummy so, and you said"—here Tony held up an accusing small finger at Jan—"you said I was never to forget her, not the least little bit."

"I know I did," Jan owned, and fell to pondering what was best to be done about these memories. Absently she dug her hoe into the ground, making ruts in the gravel, while Tony watched her solemnly.

"Then why," he went on, "do you not want me to remember Daddie?"

"Because," said Jan, "everything you seem to remember sounds so unkind."

"Well, I can't help that," Tony answered.

Jan arose from the seat. "If we sit idling here all afternoon," she remarked severely, "we shall never get that border weeded for Earley."

The afternoon post came in at four, and when Jan went in there were several letters for her on the hall-table, spread out by Hannah in a neat row, one above the other. It was Saturday, and the Indian mail was in. There was one from Peter, but it was another letter that Jan seized first, turning it over and looking at the post-mark, which was remarkably clear. She knew the excellent handwriting well, though she had seen it comparatively seldom.

It was Hugo Tancred's; and the post-mark was Port Said. She opened it with hands that trembled, and it said:

Still as a statue sat Jan. From the garden came the cheerful chirruping of birds and constant, eager questioning of Earley by the children. Earley's slow Gloucestershire speech rumbled on in muffled obbligato to the higher, carrying, little voices.

The whirr of a sewing-machine came from the morning-room, now the day-nursery, where Meg was busy with frocks for little Fay.

In a distant pantry somebody was clinking teacups. Jan shivered, though the air from the open window was only fresh, not cold. At that moment she knew exactly how an animal feels when caught in a trap. Hugo Tancred's letter was the trap, and she was in it. With the exception of the lie about other letters—Jan was perfectly sure he had written no other letters—and the stereotyped phrases about shattered lamps and the wife who was "no more," the letter was one long menace—scarcely veiled. That sentence, "in so far as you make it possible for me to do so, I will fall in with your wishes regarding them in every way," simply meant that if Jan was to keep the children she must let Hugo make ducks and drakes of her money; and if he took her money, how could she do what she ought for the children?

And he was at Port Said; only a week's journey.

Why had she left that money in Bombay? Why had she not listened to Peter? Sometimes she had thought that Peter held rather a cynically low view of his fellow-creatures—some of his fellow-creatures. Surely no one could be all bad? Jan had hoped great things of adversity for Hugo Tancred. Peter indulged in no such pleasant illusions, and said so. "Schoolgirl sentimentality" Meg had called it, and so it was. "No doubt it will be possible to find some cheap preparatory school for Tony."

Would he try to steal Tony?

From the charitable mood that hopeth all things Jan suddenly veered to a belief in all things evil of her brother-in-law. At that moment she felt him capable of murdering the child and throwing his little body down a well, as they do in India.

Again she shivered.

What was she to do?

So helpless, so unprotected; so absolutely at his mercy because she loved the children. "Never let him blackmail you," Peter had said. "Stand up to him always, and he'll probably crumple up."

Suddenly, as though someone had opened shutters in a pitch-dark room, letting in the blessed light, Jan remembered there was also a letter from Peter.

She crossed the hall to get it, though her legs shook under her and her knees were as water.

She felt she couldn't get back to the window-seat, so she sat on the edge of the gate-table and opened the letter.

A very short letter, only one side of a page.