The Chronicles of Clovis

ith China tea and small cress sandwiches. The meal was of that elegant proportion which, while ministering sympathetically to th

he original beauty remained, she was just dear Francesca Bassington. No one would have dreamed of calli

ny particular point they are usually wrong. Francesca herself, if pressed in an unguarded moment to describe her soul, would probably have described her drawing-room. Not that she would have considered that the one had stam

ls by dragging into them all the stoney griefs and unclaimed troubles they can find lying around them. Francesca loved the smooth ways and pleasant places of life; she liked not merely to look on the bright side of things but to live there and stay there. And the fact that things had, at one time and another, gone badly with her and cheated her of some of her early illusions made her cling the closer to such good fortune as remained to her now that she seemed to have reached a calmer period of her life. To undiscriminating friends she appeared in the guise of a ra

eat. The delicious bronze Fremiet on the mantelpiece had been the outcome of a Grand Prix sweepstake of many years ago; a group of Dresden figures of some considerable value had been bequeathed to her by a discreet admirer, who had added death to his other kindnesses; another group had been a self-bestowed present, purchased in blessed and unfading memory of a wonderful nine-days' bridge winnings at a country-house party. There were old Persian and Bokharan rugs and Worcester tea-services of glowing colour, and little treasures of antique silver that each enshrined a history or a memory in addition

lance of the room. From wherever you sat it seemed to confront you as the dominating feature of its surroundings. There was a pleasing serenity about the great pompous battle scene with its solemn courtly warriors bestriding their heavily prancing steeds, grey or skewbald or dun, all gravely in earnest, and yet somehow conveying the impres

r five years were all that could be safely allotted to the span of her continued spinsterhood. Beyond that period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of Francesca from the sheltering habitation that had grown to be her soul. It is true that in imagination she had built herself a bridge across the chasm, a bridge of a single span. The bridge in question was her schoolboy son Comus, now being educated somewhere in the southern counties, or rather one should say the bridge consisted of the possibility of his eventual marriage with Emmeline, in which case Francesca saw herself still reigning, a trifle squeez

her. He might so easily have married some pretty helpless little woman, and lived at Notting Hill Gate, and been the father of a long string of pale, clever useless children, who would have had birthdays and the sort of illnesses that one is expected to send grapes to, and who would have painted fatuous objects in a South Kensington manner as Christmas offerings to an aunt whose cubic space for lumber was limited. Instead of committing these unbrotherly actions, which are so frequent in family life that they might almost be called brotherly, Henry had married a woman who had both money and a sense of repose, and their one child had the brilliant virtue of never saying anything which e

storm and dust and dislocation and the least possible amount of collar-work, and come somehow with a laugh through a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone else concerned to tears or Cassandra-like forebodings. Sometimes they sober down in after-life and become uninteresting, forgetting that they were ever lords of anything; sometimes Fate plays r

ed down like a dust-storm refreshed, to discuss one of the fashion

ttention and consideration before long. The first thing that we shall have to do is to get out of the dilettante and academic way of approaching it. We must collect

lity she was reflecting that Henry possibly found it difficult to interest people in any topic that he enlarged on. His talents lay so thoroughly in the direction of be

this subject," continued Henry, "and I pointed out at so

but decorously to the majority

u were down there?" she interrupted; "Eliza Bar

out at some length; there had been occasions when she had extensively occupied the strictly limited span allotted to the platform oratory of a group of speakers of whom Henry Greech had been an impatient unit. He might see eye to eye with her on the leading questions of the day, but he persistently wore mental bl

in the background, and not to imagine that she is the necessary mouthpiece of all the progressive thought in the countryside. I fancy Cano

ghed with gen

well up in all the subjects she talks

as being drawn out on the subject of Eliza Barnet,

y about the house I presume Comus ha

ar the separation well. When he's here it's rather like having a live volcano in the hous

aid Henry; "in a year or two he wil

ision. She was not fond of looking intimately at the future in the presence of anot

hat?" persi

e he will be u

act

. I'm quite ready to listen to su

finding of suitable employment. From what we know of Comus it would be rather a waste of ti

omething," sa

ss. That would solve the financial side of his problem. If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot b

r fiercer than a trout, was scornfully su

ne Chetrof of course. One could hardly call her an heiress, but she's got a comfortable little income of her own and I supp

line of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of tim

he way, that little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes to Thaleby this term. I'll write and tell Comus to be s

sniffed Henry; "I think we may safely le

a favourite

licate health, timid disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice

say nothing about the boy to Comus. He does

her brother's opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice