Doctor Hilary was returning from his rounds. His state of mind was nearly as grey as the atmosphere.

It is one thing to agree to a mad-brained scheme in the first amused interest of its propounding, even to mould it further, and bring it into shape. It is quite another to be actually confronted with the finished scheme, to realize that, though you may not be its veritable parent, you have at all events foster-fathered it quite considerably, and that, moreover, you cannot now, in conscience, cast off responsibility in its behalf.

The fact that you had excellent reasons for adopting the scheme in the first place, will doubtless be of comfort to your soul, but that particular species of comfort and ordinary everyday common sense are not always as closely united as you might desire. In fact they are occasionally apt to pull in entirely opposite directions, a method of procedure which is far from consoling.

Doctor Hilary found it far from consoling.

Conscience told him quite plainly that his real and innermost reason for foster-fathering the scheme was simply and solely for the sake of snatching at any mortal thing that would, or could, bring interest into an old man’s life. Common sense demanded why on earth he had not suggested an alternative idea, something a trifle less mad. And it was mad. There did not now appear one single reasonable point in it, though very assuredly there were quite a vast number of unreasonable ones.

In the first place, and it seemed to him nearly, if not quite, the most unreasonable point, Nicholas had known nothing whatever about the young man he had elected to make his heir,—nothing, that is, beyond the fact that he had known the young man’s father, and had once seen Antony himself when Antony was a child. There had even been very considerable difficulty in obtaining knowledge of his whereabouts.

In the second place, it appeared quite absurd to appoint the young man to the position of under-gardener at the Hall. It was more than probable that he knew nothing whatever about gardening. It was true that, if he did not, he could learn. But then Golding, the head gardener, might not unreasonably find matter for amazement and comment in the fact that a young and ignorant man, who was paid a pound a week and allowed to rent a furnished cottage, should be thrust upon him, rather than an experienced man, or an ignorant boy who would have received at the most eight shillings a week, and have lived at his own home. Amazement and comment were to be avoided, that had been Nicholas’s idea, and yet, to Doctor Hilary’s mind they ran the risk of being courted from the outset. In the third place, how was it likely that a man of education—and it had been ascertained that Antony was a university man—could comport himself like a labourer in any position,—gardener, farm-hand, or chauffeur? The conditions had stated that he was to do so. But could he? There was the point.

The more Doctor Hilary thought about the conditions, the madder they appeared to him. Yet, having undertaken the job of carrying the mad scheme through, he could not possibly back out at the eleventh hour. He could only hope for the best, but it must be confessed that he was not exceedingly optimistic about that best. And further, he was not exceedingly optimistic about the young man. He could imagine himself, in a like situation, consigning Nick and his conditions to the nether regions; certainly not submitting meekly to a year’s effacement of his personality for the sake of money. Such conditions would have enraged him.

No; he was not optimistic regarding the man. He pictured him as either a bit of a fawner, who would cringe through the year, or a keen-headed business man, who would go through it with a steel-trap mouth, and an eye to every weakness in his fellow-workers. Certainly neither type he pictured appealed to him. Yet he felt confident he would find one of the two, and had already conceived a strong prejudice against Antony Gray. From which regrettable fact it will be seen that he was committing the sin of rash judgment.

It was not altogether surprising, therefore, that his mood was nearly as grey as the atmosphere.

He sighed heavily, and shook his head, somewhat after the fashion of a big dog. Reasons, partly mental, partly physical were responsible for the shake. In the first place it was an attempt to dispel mental depression; in the second place it was to free his eyebrows and eyelashes from the rain drops clinging to them, since the rain was descending in a grey misty veil.

With the shake, an idea struck him.

Why not confront the embodied scheme at once? Why not interview this preposterous young man without delay, and be done with it?

He gave a brief direction to his coachman.

Five minutes later saw him standing at the gate of Copse Cottage, his dog-cart driving away down the lane. It had been his own doing. He had said he would walk home. An idiotic idea! What on earth had suggested it to him?

However, it was done now.

He pushed open the gate, and walked up the little flagged path.