“Ann’s the best pal Tony could possibly have, so, for goodness’ sake, be content with that and don’t get addling your brains by trying to marry her off to him. Match-making isn’t a man’s job. A female child of twelve could beat the cleverest man that’s hatched at the game.”

Lady Susan Hallett fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the expression of them.

The man she addressed was standing with his back to the open French window of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac LÉman which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the quai below. He was a tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. “One of the old school” was written all over him—one of the old, autocratic school which believed that “a man should be master in his own house, b’gad!” By which—though he would never have admitted it—Sir Philip Brabazon inferred a kind of divinely appointed dictatorship over the souls and bodies of the various members of his household which even included the right to arrange and determine their lives for them, without reference to their personal desires and tastes.

It was odd, therefore, that his chief friend and confidante—and the woman he would have married thirty years ago if she would only have had him—should be Lady Susan, as tolerant and modern in her outlook as he was archaic.

She was a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes were now regarding Sir Philip with a quizzical expression of amusement.

“Besides,” she pursued. “Ann wouldn’t have half as much pull with him if she were his wife, let me tell you.”

“You think not?”

“I’m sure. A man will let himself be lectured and generally licked into shape by the woman he wants to marry—but after marriage he usually prefers to do all the lecturing that’s required himself.”

The old man shot a swift glance at her from under a pair of shaggy brows.

“How do you know?” he demanded rudely. “You’re not married.”

Lady Susan nodded.

“That’s why.”

“Do you mean—do you mean—” he began stormily, then, meeting her quiet, humorous gaze, stammered off into silence. Presently he fixed his monocle in one of his fierce old eyes and surveyed her from behind it as from behind a barricade.

“Do you mean me to understand that that’s the reason you declined to marry me?”

She laughed a little.

“I think it was. I didn’t want to be browbeaten into submission—as you browbeat poor Virginia, and as you would Tony if he hadn’t got a good dash of the Brabazon devil in him. You’re a confirmed bully, you know.”

“I shouldn’t have bullied you.” There was an odd note of wistfulness in the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened incredibly. “I shouldn’t have bullied you, Susan.”

“Yes, you would. You couldn’t have helped it. You’d like to bully my little Ann into marrying Tony if you dared—monster!”

The grim mouth beneath the clipped moustache relaxed into an unwilling smile.

“I believe I would,” he admitted. “Hang it all, Susan, it would settle the boy if he were married. He wants a wife to look after him.”

“To look after him?”—with a faintly ironical inflection.

“That’s what I said”—irritably. “That’s—that’s what wife’s for, dammit! Isn’t it?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head regretfully. “That idea’s extinct as the dodo. Antiquated, Philip—very.”

He glared at her ferociously.

“Worth more than half your modern ideas put together,” he retorted. “Women, don’t know their duty nowadays. If they’d get married and have babies and keep house in the good, old-fashioned way, instead of trying to be doctors and barristers and the Lord knows what, the world would be a lot better off. A good wife makes a good man—and that’s job enough for any woman.”

“I should think it might be,” agreed Lady Susan meditatively. “But it sounds a trifle feeble, doesn’t it? I mean, on the part of the good man. It’s making a sort of lean-to greenhouse of him, isn’t it?”

“You’re outrageous, Susan! I’m not a ‘lean-to’ anything, but do you suppose I’d be the bad-tempered old ruffian I am—at least, you say I am—if you’d married me thirty years ago?”

“Twenty times worse, probably,” she replied promptly. “Because, like most wives, I should have spoiled you.”

Sir Philip looked out of the window.

“I’ve missed that spoiling, Susan,” he said. Once again that incongruous little note of wistfulness sounded in his voice. But, an instant later, Lady Susan wondered if her ears had deceived her, for he swung round and snapped out in his usual hectoring manner: “Then you won’t help me in this?”

“Help you to marry off Ann to Tony? No, I won’t. For one thing, I don’t want to spare her. And if ever I have to, it’s going to be to some one who’ll look after her—and take jolly good care of her, too!”

“Obstinate woman! Well—well”—irritably. “What am I to do, then?”

“Can’t you manage your own nephew?”

“No, I can’t, confound it! Told me this morning he wanted to be an architect. An architect!” He spoke as though an architect were something that crawled. “Imagine a Brabazon of Lorne turning architect!”

“Well, why not?” placidly. “It’s better than being nothing but a gambler—like poor Dick. Tony always did love making plans. Don’t you remember, when he was about eight, he made a drawing of heaven, with seating accommodation for the angels—cherubim and seraphim, and so on—in tiers? The general effect was rather like a plan of the Albert Hall”—smiling reminiscently. “Seriously, though, Philip, if the boy wants work, in the name of common sense, let him have it.”

“There’s plenty of work for him at Lorne”—stubbornly. “Let him learn to manage the property. That’s what I want—and what I’ll have. God bless my soul! What have I brought the boy up for? To be a comfort in my old age, of course, and a credit to the name. Architect be hanged!”

As he spoke there came the sound of footsteps in the hall outside—light, buoyant steps—and Lady Susan’s face brightened.

“That will be Ann,” she said. Adding quickly, as though to conclude the subject they had been discussing: “I warn you, Philip, you’re driving the boy on too tight a rein.”

Sir Philip greeted Ann good-humouredly. In spite of the fact that she showed no disposition to fall in with his wishes and marry Tony, he was extremely fond of her. She was one of the few people who had never been afraid of him. She even contradicted him flatly at times, and, like most autocrats, he found her attitude a refreshing change from that of the majority of people with whom he came in contact.

“Seen Tony in the town?” he demanded. It was evident the boy was hardly ever out of his thoughts.

“Yes. We’ve just been having tea together.”

Sir Philip nodded approvingly.

“Excellent, excellent. Keep him out of mischief, like a good girl.”

Ann laughed, a shade scornfully, but vouchsafed no answer, and soon afterwards Sir Philip took his departure.

“The twelve-thirty steamer to-morrow, then, Susan,” he said as he shook hands. “I’ll call for you in the car on my way to the dÉbarcadÈre.”

When he had gone Lady Susan and Ann exchanged glances.

“I’ve been telling him he drives Tony on too tight a rein,” said the former, answering the unspoken question in the girl’s eyes.

“It’s absurd of him,” declared Ann indignantly. “He tries to keep him tied to his apron-strings as if he were a child. And he’s not! He’s a man. He’s been through that beastly war. Probably he knows heaps more about life—the real things of life—than Sir Philip himself, who wants to dictate everything he may or may not do.”

“Probably he does. And that’s just the trouble. When you get a terribly experienced younger generation and a hide-bound older one there are liable to be fireworks.”

“All I can say is that if Sir Philip won’t let him have a little more freedom, he’ll drive Tony just the way he doesn’t want him to go.”

Lady Susan’s keen glance scrutinised the girl’s troubled face.

“You can’t help it, you know,” she remarked briefly.

“That’s just it,” answered Ann uncertainly. “I sometimes wonder if I could—ought to—” She broke off, leaving her sentence unfinished.

Lady Susan, apparently not noticing her embarrassment, gathered up her belongings preparatory to leaving the room.

“Marrying to reform a rake never pays,” she said in level tones. “It’s like rolling a stone uphill.”

“But Tony isn’t a rake!” protested Ann, flushing quickly. “There’s any amount of good in him, and he might—might steady down if he were married.”

“Let him steady down before marriage, not after”—grimly. “A woman may throw her whole life’s happiness into the scales and still fail to turn the balance. Without love—the love that can forgive seventy times seven and then not be tired—she’ll certainly fail. And you don’t love Tony.”

It was an assertion rather than a question, yet Ann felt that Lady Susan was waiting for an answer.

“N-no,” she acknowledged at last. “But I feel as though he belongs to me in a way. You see, Virginia ‘left’ him to me.”

“You’re not called upon to marry a legacy,” retorted Lady Susan.

Ann smiled.

“No, I suppose not.” She was silent a moment. “I wish Sir Philip didn’t lead him such a life. It’s more than any man could be expected to stand.”

Lady Susan paused in the doorway.

“Well, my dear, don’t vex your soul too much about it all. However badly people mismanage our affairs for us, things have a wonderful way of working out all right in the long run.”

Left alone, Ann strolled out on to the balcony which overlooked the lake, and, leaning her arms on the balustrade, yielded to the current of her thoughts. Notwithstanding Lady Susan’s cheery optimism, she was considerably worried about Tony. She could see so exactly what it was that fretted him—this eternal dancing attendance on Sir Philip, who insisted on the boy’s accompanying him wherever he went, and she felt a sudden angry contempt for the selfishness of old age which could so obstinately bind eager, straining youth to its chariot wheels. It seemed to her that the older generation frequently fell very far short of its responsibility towards the younger.

With a flash of bitterness she reflected that her own father had failed in his duty to the next generation almost as signally as old Sir Philip, although in a totally different manner. Archibald Lovell had indeed been curiously devoid of any sense of paternal responsibility. Connoisseur and collector of old porcelain, he had lived a dreamy, dilettante existence, absorbed in his collection and paying little or no heed to the comings and goings of his two children, Ann and her brother Robin. And less heed still to their ultimate welfare. He neglected his estate from every point of view, except the one of raising mortgages upon it so that he might have the wherewithal to add to his store of ceramic treasures. He lived luxuriously, employing a high-priced chef and soft-footed, well-trained servants to see to his comfort, because anything short of perfection grated on his artistic sensibilities. And when an intrusive influenza germ put a sudden end to his entirely egotistical activities, his son and daughter found themselves left with only a few hundred pounds between them. Lovell Court was perforce sold at once to pay off the mortgages, and to meet the many other big outstanding debts the contents of the house had to be dispersed without reserve. The collection of old porcelain to which Archibald Lovell had sacrificed most of the human interests of life was soon scattered amongst the dealers in antiques, who, in many instances, bought back at bargain prices the very pieces they had sold to him at an extravagantly high cost. Every one went away from the Lovell sale well-pleased, except the two whose fortunes were most intimately concerned—the son and daughter of the dead man. They were left to face the problem of continued existence.

For the time being the circumstances of the war had acted as a solvent. Robin, home on sick leave, had returned to the front, while Ann, who possessed the faculty of getting the last ounce out of any car she handled, very soon found warwork as a motor-driver. But, with the return of peace, the question of pounds, shillings and pence had become more acute, and at present Robin was undertaking any odd job that turned up pending the time when he should find the ideal berth which would enable him to make a home for Ann, while the latter, thanks to the good offices of Sir Philip Brabazon, had for the last six months filled the post of companion-chauffeuse to Lady Susan Hallett.

The entire six months had been passed at Mon RÊve, Lady Susan’s villa at Montricheux, and with a jerk Ann emerged from her train of retrospective thought to the realisation that her lines had really fallen in very pleasant places, after all.

It seemed as though there were some truth in Lady Susan’s assertion that things had a way of working out all right in the end. But for her father’s mismanagement of his affairs—and the affairs of those dependent on him—Ann recognised that she might very well have been still pursuing the rather dull, uneventful life which obtained at Lovell Court, without the prospect of any vital change or happening to relieve its tedium, whereas the catastrophe which had once seemed to threaten chaos had actually opened the door of the world to her.