"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly.

Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant
sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and
took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large
envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her
mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a
small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other
side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky
cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building,
Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt
furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That
patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the
time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer.

In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first,
then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all
kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in
front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say,
"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of
the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby
greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with
indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's
all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!"

In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also
of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both
of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that,
as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial