He sat down and began to eat with a perfectly normal demeanour.  The silence, however, remained unbroken until Noel burst tempestuously into the room.  No silence ever outlasted his appearance.

He flung his arms round his brother-in-law and embraced him warmly, with a friendly, “Hullo, you greedy beggar!  Hope you haven’t gobbled up everything!  I’m confoundedly hungry.  Morning, Aunt Philippa!  I suppose you fed long ago?  It’s a disgusting habit, isn’t it?  But one we can’t dispense with at present.  Where’s Chris?”

“Chris,” said Aunt Philippa icily, “has already breakfasted, and so have I.”

She moved towards the door as she spoke.  Noel sprang with alacrity to open it, and bowed to the floor behind her retreating form.

“She looks like a dying duck in a thunderstorm,” he observed, as he returned to the table.  “What have you been doing to her?  Has there been a thunderstorm?”

Mordaunt met his inquiring eyes without a smile.  “Noel,” he said, “if you can’t be courteous to your aunt and your sister, I won’t have you at the table at all—­or in the house for that matter.”

Noel uttered a long whistle.  “I thought I smelt the reek of battle in the air!  What’s up?  Anything exciting?”

“Do you understand me?” Mordaunt said, sticking to his point.

Noel broke into smiles.  “Oh, perfectly, my dear chap!  You’re as simple as the Book of Common Prayer.  But it would be a pity to kick me out of the house, you know.  You’d miss me—­horribly.”

Mordaunt leaned back in his chair.  “Then I’ll give you a sound caning instead.”

Noel nodded vigorous approval.  “Much more suitable.  I like you better every day.  So does Chris. I believe she’ll be in love with you before long.”

“Really?” said Mordaunt.

“Yes, really.”  Noel was munching complacently between his words.  “I never thought you’d do it.  The odds were dead against you.  She only married you to get away from Aunt Philippa.  Of course you know that?”

“Really?” Mordaunt said again.  He was not apparently paying much attention to the boy’s chatter.

“Yes, really,” Noel reiterated, with a grin.  “It’s solid, simple, sordid fact.  The only chap she ever seriously cared about was a little beast of a Frenchman she chummed up with years ago at Valpre.  I never met the beggar myself, but I’m sure he was a beast.  But I’ll bet she’d have married him if she’d had the chance.  They were as thick as thieves.”

At this point Mordaunt opened the morning paper with a bored expression, and straightway immersed himself in its contents.

Noel turned his attention to his breakfast, which he dispatched with astonishing rapidity, finally remarking, as he rose:  “But you never can tell what a woman will do when it comes to the point—­unless she’s a suffragette, in which case she may be safely relied on to make a howling donkey of herself for all time.”