him. That ought to fetch him if he remembers you when you were
twenty-two."

Laura was neither dishevelled nor in tears: perhaps such scenes
were no novelty to her. She leant against the frame of the open
window, looking out over the sunlit garden full of flowers, over
the wide expanse of turf that sloped down to a wide, shallow
river all sparkling in western light, and over airy fields on
the other side of it to the roofs of the distant village strung
out under a break of woody hill.

"Are you sure you want him? He used to have a hot temper when he
was a young man, and you know, Berns, it would be tiresome if
there were any open scandal."

"Scandal be hanged," said Bernard Clowes. "You do as you're
told." His wife gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the
shoulders as if to disclaim further responsibility. She was
breathing rather hurriedly as if she had been running, and her
neck was so white that the shadow of her sunlit wistaria threw a
faint lilac stain on the warm, fine grain of her skin. And the
haggard look returned to Bernard's eyes as he watched her, and
with it a wistfulness, a weariness of desire, "hungry, and
barren, and sharp as the sea." Laura never saw that hunger in
his eyes. If he spared her nothing else he spared her that.

"You do as I tell you, old girl," his harsh voice had softened
again. "There won't be any row. Honestly I'd like to have old
Lawrence here for a bit, I'm not rotting now. He had almost four
years of it--almost as long as I had. I'll guarantee it put a