Chapter VII

Ronder's Day



Ronder had now spent several months in Polchester and was able to come to
an opinion about it, and the opinion that he had come to was that he could
be very comfortable there. His aunt, who, in spite of her sharpness, never
was sure how he would take anything, was a little surprised when he told
her this. But then she was never certain what were the secret springs from
which he derived that sense of comfort that was the centre of his life.
She should have known by now that he derived it from two things--luxury
and the possibility of intrigue.

Polchester could not have appeared to any casual observer a luxurious
town, but it had for Ronder exactly that combination of beauty and mystery
that obtained for him his sensation.

He did not analyse it as yet further than that--he knew that those two
things were there; he might investigate them at his leisure.

In that easy, smiling fashion that he had developed from his earliest days
as the surest protection for his own security and ease, he arranged
everything around him to assure his tranquillity. Everything was not as
yet arranged; it might take him six months, a year, two years for that
arrangement...but he knew now that it would be done.