His correspondence with his father had been less frequent, and absolutely one-sided, since Lord Ashbridge took no notice at all of his letters.  Michael regretted this, as showing that he was still outcast, but it cannot be said to have come between him and the sunshine, for he had begun to manufacture the sunshine within, that internal happiness which his environment and way of life produced, which seemed to be independent of all that was not directly connected with it.  But a letter which he received next morning from his mother stated, in addition to the fact that Petsy had another of her tiresome bilious attacks (poor lamb), that his father and she thought it right that he should come down to Ashbridge for Christmas.  It conveyed the sense that at this joyful season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it lasted, of the nature of a strongly-armed neutrality, was proclaimed, but the prospect was not wholly encouraging, for Lady Ashbridge added that she hoped Michael would not “go on” vexing his father.  What precisely Michael was expected to do in order to fulfil that wish was not further stated, but he wrote dutifully enough to say that he would come down at Christmas.

But the letter rekindled his dormant sense of there being other people in the world beside his immediate circle; also, indefinably, it gave him the sense that his mother wanted him.  That should be so then, and sequentially he remembered with a pang of self-reproach that he had not as much as indicated his presence in London to Aunt Barbara, or set eyes on her since their meeting in August.  He knew she was in London, since he had seen her name in some paragraph in the papers not long before, and instantly wrote to ask her to dine with him at a near date.  Her answer was characteristic.

“Of course I’ll dine with you, my dear,” she wrote; “it will be delightful.  And what has happened to you?  Your letter actually conveyed a sense of cordiality.  You never used to be cordial.  And I wish to meet some of your nice friends.  Ask one or two, please—­a prima donna of some kind and a pianist, I think.  I want them weird and original—­the prima donna with short hair, and the pianist with long.  In Tony’s new station in life I never see anybody except the sort of people whom your father likes.  Are you forgiven yet, by the way?”

Michael found himself on the grin at the thought of Aunt Barbara suddenly encountering the two magnificent Falbes (prima donna and pianist exactly as she had desired) as representing the weird sort of people whom she pictured his living among, and the result quite came up to his expectations.  As usual, Aunt Barbara was late, and came in talking rapidly about the various causes that had detained her, which her fruitful imagination had suggested to her as she dressed.  In order, perhaps, to suit herself to the circle in which she would pass the evening, she had put on (or, rather, it looked as if her maid had thrown at her) a very awful sort of tea-gown, brown and prickly-looking, and adapted to Bohemian circles.  She, with the same lively imagination, had pictured Michael in a velveteen coat and soft shirt, the pianist as very small, with spectacles and long hair, and the prima donna a full-blown kind of barmaid with Roman pearls. . . .