The idea that Levison should usurp his father’s place overwhelmed Douglas with horror and shame; the prospect was intolerable; so were other matters; for instance, his monotonous office life, the want of variety and fresh air.  For exercise, he belonged to a neighbouring gymnasium, but this was not sufficient for a country-bred, energetic young man, in his twenty-fourth year.  As for the variety of amusements that satisfied and delighted his brother clerks, they left him cold.  He was sensible of a tormenting thirst for a far-away different life—­and its chances, sick of this existence, of continually going round and round, like a squirrel in a cage.  A change of surroundings and scene, or a spice of adventure, was what he longed for—­as eagerly and as hopelessly as some fallen wayfarer in a desert land.  His mother’s flinty attitude and hostile nagging had frozen a naturally affectionate disposition, and Shafto passed several years of his youth without one single ray of woman’s love, until generous Mrs. Malone had come forward and installed him in her heart.  His usual routine was breakfast at eight, office at nine, lunch twelve-thirty, freedom at six, dinner at seven-thirty.  On Saturday afternoons he was expected at “Monte Carlo”—­to join the family at tennis and high tea—­and here, over the little red villa, brooded yet another cloud!  Cossie, the gushing and good-natured, had been given what her brother brutally termed “the chuck” by her young man; he had taken on another girl, and his repentance and return were hopeless.

Shafto listened to Cossie’s hysterical lamentations and outpourings with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario!  Of late Cossie’s manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis.  Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her declaiming to another girl: 

“No, no, no, I won’t have it; Douglas is my boy—­and my joy!  Douglas belongs to me!”

“There will be two opinions about that,” he muttered to himself, as he flung down his hat and entered the tawdry little drawing-room; but, in spite of his stern resolutions, he found himself borne along by a strong and irresistible current of family goodwill.  Sandy gave him cigars, Delia declared over and over again that he was a “darling,” his aunt became extra-motherly, and Cossie endowed him with button-holes, pairs of ill-knit shapeless socks, and sent him many notes.  She seemed to appropriate him as a matter of course, and once when they parted at the gate, had held up her face to be kissed—­but this undesired favour he affected not to see.  He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance.  He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang.  Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst!  One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him into her room.