“There’s one for you and your jawing last night, Aaron, my boy!” said our hero to himself.

“I thought Sir William seemed so full of life and energy,” he said, aloud.

“Ah, did you!  No, he WANTS to be.  But he can’t do it.  He’s very much upset this morning.  I have been very anxious about him.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

Lady Franks departed to some duty.  Aaron sat alone before the fire.  It was a huge fireplace, like a dark chamber shut in by tall, finely-wrought iron gates.  Behind these iron gates of curly iron the logs burned and flickered like leopards slumbering and lifting their heads within their cage.  Aaron wondered who was the keeper of the savage element, who it was that would open the iron grille and throw on another log, like meat to the lions.  To be sure the fire was only to be looked at:  like wild beasts in the Zoo.  For the house was warm from roof to floor.  It was strange to see the blue air of sunlight outside, the yellow-edged leaves falling in the wind, the red flowers shaking.

The gong sounded softly through the house.  The Colonel came in heartily from the garden, but did not speak to Aaron.  The Major and his wife came pallid down the stairs.  Lady Franks appeared, talking domestic-secretarial business with the wife of Arthur.  Arthur, well-nourished and half at home, called down the stairs.  And then Sir William descended, old and frail now in the morning, shaken:  still he approached Aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he had spent his morning.  The old man who had made a fortune:  how he expected homage:  and how he got it!  Homage, like most things, is just a convention and a social trick.  Aaron found himself paying homage, too, to the old man who had made a fortune.  But also, exacting a certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune.  Getting it, too.  On what grounds?  Youth, maybe.  But mostly, scorn for fortunes and fortune-making.  Did he scorn fortunes and fortune-making?  Not he, otherwise whence this homage for the old man with much money?  Aaron, like everybody else, was rather paralysed by a million sterling, personified in one old man.  Paralysed, fascinated, overcome.  All those three.  Only having no final control over his own make-up, he could not drive himself into the money-making or even into the money-having habit.  And he had just wit enough to threaten Sir William’s golden king with his own ivory queen and knights of wilful life.  And Sir William quaked.

“Well, and how have you spent your morning?” asked the host.

“I went first to look at the garden.”

“Ah, not much to see now.  They have been beautiful with flowers, once.  But for two and a half years the house has been a hospital for officers—­and even tents in the park and garden—­as many as two hundred wounded and sick at a time.  We are only just returning to civil life.  And flowers need time.  Yes—­yes—­British officers—­for two and a half years.  But did you go up, now, to the belvedere?”