great achievements and responsibilities of his Eastern career he found
retirement congenial. The soft equable climate benefited his health.
Rough shooting and good fishing could be had in plenty--stag-hunting,
too, in Arnewood Forest, when he inclined to such sport. The Hard was
sufficiently easy of access from town for friends to come and stay with
him. Convenient for crossing to the Continent too, when he took his
yearly cure at Aix or at Vichy, or went south for a couple of months, as
last winter for instance, to Cette, Montpelier and across, by Pau, to the
Atlantic seaboard at St. Sebastian, Biarritz, and Bayonne.

"When my father travels I go with him," Damaris said, raising her head
and looking at the young man with proud, deliberate eyes. "We both
suffered too much, we must never be separated again. And when we go
abroad, we go alone. There is no one to give advice or interfere. We take
Hordle, to pack and look after the baggage. We are always together, and
I am always happy. I wish we could live like that always, with no settled
home. But after a while, my father grows tired of hotels. He begins to
wish for the quiet of The Hard, and all the things he is accustomed to.
And then, naturally, I begin to wish for it too."

From which statement, made as he judged with intention, Tom apprehended
an attachment of no common order existing between these two persons,
father and child. If, as family gossip disapprovingly hinted, the
affection given appeared to trench on exaggeration, the affection
returned was of kindred quality, fervid, self-realized, absorbing, and
absorbed. Comparing it with his own humorously tolerant filial attitude,
Tom felt at once contrite and injured. The contrast was glaring. But
then, as he hastened to add--though whether in extenuation of his own, or
of his father's, shortcomings remained open to question--wasn't the
contrast between the slightly pompous, slightly bow-windowed, provincial,