Tietjens said:

‘You will get her settlement transferred to the child?’

Christopher answered:

‘If it can be done without friction.’

Mr. Tietjens had commented only:

‘Ah!’ Some minutes later he had said:

‘Your mother’s very well.’ Then: ‘That motor-plough didn’t answer,’ and then: ‘I shall be dining at the club.’

Christopher said:

‘May I bring Macmaster in, sir? You said you would put him up.’

Mr. Tietjens answered:

‘Yes, do. Old General ffolliott will be there. He’ll second him. He’d better make his acquaintance.’ He had gone away.

Tietjens considered that his relationship with his father was an almost perfect one. They were like two men in the club – the only club; thinking so alike that there was no need to talk. His father had spent a great deal of time abroad before succeeding to the estate. When, over the moors, he went into the industrial town that he owned, he drove always in a coach-and-four. Tobacco smoke had never been known inside Groby Hall: Mr. Tietjens had twelve pipes filled every morning by his head gardener and placed in rose bushes down the drive. These he smoked during the day. He farmed a good deal of his own land; had sat for Holdernesse from 1878 to 1881, but had not presented himself for election after the redistribution of seats; he was patron of eleven livings; rode to hounds every now and then, and shot fairly regularly. He had three other sons and two daughters, and was now sixty-one.

To his sister Effie, on the day after his wife’s elopement, Christopher had said over the telephone:

‘Will you take Tommie for an indefinite period? Marchant will come with him. She offers to take charge of your two youngest as well, so you’ll save a maid, and I’ll pay their board and a bit over.’

The voice of his sister – from Yorkshire – had answered:

‘Certainly, Christopher.’ She was the wife of a vicar, near Groby, and she had several children.

To Macmaster Tietjens had said:

‘Sylvia has left me with that fellow Perowne.’

Macmaster had answered only: ‘Ah!’

Tietjens had continued:

‘I’m letting the house and warehousing the furniture. Tommie is going to my sister Effie. Marchant is going with him.’

Macmaster had said:

‘Then you’ll be wanting your old rooms.’ Macmaster occupied a very large storey of the Gray’s Inn buildings. After Tietjens had left him on his marriage he had continued to enjoy solitude, except that his man had moved down from the attic to the bedroom formerly occupied by Tietjens.

Tietjens said:

‘I’ll come in to-morrow night if I may. That will give Ferens time to get back into his attic.’

That morning, at breakfast, four months having passed, Tietjens had received a letter from his wife. She asked, without any contrition at all, to be taken back. She was fed up with Perowne and Brittany.

Tietjens looked up at Macmaster. Macmaster was already half out of his chair, looking at him with enlarged, steel-blue eyes, his beard quivering. By the time Tietjens spoke Macmaster had his hand on the neck of the cut-glass brandy decanter in the brown wood tantalus.

Tietjens said:

‘Sylvia asks me to take her back.’

Macmaster said:

‘Have a little of this!’

Tietjens was about to say: ‘No’, automatically. He changed that to:

‘Yes. Perhaps. A liqueur glass.’

He noticed that the lip of the decanter agitated, tinkling on the glass. Macmaster must be trembling.

Macmaster, with his back still turned, said:

‘Shall you take her back?’

Tietjens answered:

‘I imagine so.’ The brandy warmed his chest in its descent. Macmaster said:

‘Better have another.’

Tietjens answered:

‘Yes. Thanks.’

Macmaster went on with his breakfast and his letters. So did Tietjens.