at Bladesover, but I really cannot recall more than a little of the
quality of the circumstances. That great crisis of my boyhood stands out
very vividly as an effect, as a sort of cardinal thing for me, but when
I look for details, particularly details that led up to the crisis--I
cannot find them in any developing order at all. This halfbrother,
Archie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember him clearly
as a fair-haired, supercilious looking, weedily-lank boy, much taller
than I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that we hated
each other by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and yet I cannot
remember my first meeting with him at all.

Looking back into these past things--it is like rummaging in a neglected
attic that has experienced the attentions of some whimsical robber--I
cannot even account for the presence of these children at Bladesover.
They were, I know, among the innumerable cousins of Lady Drew, and
according to the theories of downstairs candidates for the ultimate
possession of Bladesover. If they were, their candidature was
unsuccessful. But that great place, with all its faded splendour, its
fine furniture, its large traditions, was entirely at the old lady's
disposition; and I am inclined to think it is true that she used this
fact to torment and dominate a number of eligible people. Lord Osprey
was among the number of these, and she showed these hospitalities to his
motherless child and step-child, partly, no doubt, because he was poor,
but quite as much, I nowadays imagine, in the dim hope of finding some
affectionate or imaginative outcome of contact with them. Nannie had
dropped out of the world this second time, and Beatrice was in the
charge of an extremely amiable and ineffectual poor army-class young
woman whose name I never knew. They were, I think, two remarkably
illmanaged and enterprising children. I seem to remember too, that it
was understood that I was not a fit companion for them, and that our