bitterly than ever.

But this time he had really had no hope at all. Yesterday had seen a
crisis and a super-crisis. In the afternoon the butcher had stood at
the back door and shouted and threatened, and he had been followed
almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and
good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on
the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for. Edith
Stonehouse, with an air of outraged dignity, had lodged him in the
library and regaled him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold
joint, and it was understood that there he would remain until such time
as Christine raised 40 pounds from somewhere.

These were mere incidents--entirely commonplace--but at six o'clock
James Stonehouse himself had driven up in a taxi, to the driver of
which he had appeared to hand the contents of all his pockets, and a
moment later stormed into the house in a mood which was, if anything,
more devastating than his ungovernable rages. He had been
exuberant--exultant--his good-humour white-hot and dangerous. Looking
into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light, it
would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger.
His moods were like that--too close to be distinguished from one
another with any safety. Christine, who had just come from
interviewing the bailiff, had looked grave and disapproving. She knew
probably, that her disapproval was useless and even disastrous, but
there was an obstinate rectitude in her character that made it
impossible for her to humour him. But Edith Stonehouse and Robert had
played up out of sheer terror.

"You do seem jolly, Jim," Edith had said in her hard, common voice.