repent: he saw that even if the affair went with romantic success--a
thing hardly possible--his position and hers might be awkward enough.
Her friends would be long in forgiving either of them, and find ways
enough to hurt them both. Mr. Hadley, confound him, spoke the common
sense of mankind.

There was one solution--that estimable father. By the time he came back
to the house on Tether-down, Harry was resolved to enlist under the
ambiguous banner of Colonel Boyce.




CHAPTER VII

GENEROSITY OF A FATHER


With grim irony Harry congratulated himself on his decision. When first
he came into the house he heard Alison singing. There was indeed (as he
told himself clearly) nothing wonderful about her voice--it resembled
the divine only in being still and small. Yet he could not (he called
himself still more clearly a fool) keep away from it, and so he slunk
into Lady Waverton's drawing-room. Only duty and stated hours were wont
to drag him there. Lady Waverton showed her appreciation of his unusual
attendance by staring at him across the massed trifles of the room with
sleepy and insolent amazement. But it was not the glassy eyes of Lady
Waverton which convinced Harry that flight was the true wisdom. Over
Alison at the harpsichord, Geoffrey hung tenderly: their shoulders
touched, eyes answered eyes, and miss was radiant. She sang at him with a