Shafto listened to Cossie's hysterical lamentations and outpourings
with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth
began to dawn on him, that _he_ was selected to replace the faithless
Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She
seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to
meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his
partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her
declaiming to another girl:

"No, no, no, I won't have it; Douglas is my boy--and my joy! Douglas
belongs to _me_!"

"There will be two opinions about that," he muttered to himself, as he
flung down his hat and entered the tawdry little drawing-room; but, in
spite of his stern resolutions, he found himself borne along by a
strong and irresistible current of family goodwill. Sandy gave him
cigars, Delia declared over and over again that he was a "darling," his
aunt became extra-motherly, and Cossie endowed him with button-holes,
pairs of ill-knit shapeless socks, and sent him many notes. She seemed
to appropriate him as a matter of course, and once when they parted at
the gate, had held up her face to be kissed--but this undesired favour
he affected not to see. He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied
him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with
alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against
the slap-dash untidy _ménage_, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the
shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the
Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky
parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative
gesture, beckoned him into her room.