Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, 
was scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting.

Francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion.  "I don't know 
about an heiress," she said reflectively.  "There's Emmeline 
Chetrof of course.  One could hardly call her an heiress, but she's 
got a comfortable little income of her own and I suppose something 
more will come to her from her grandmother.  Then, of course, you 
know this house goes to her when she marries."

"That would be very convenient," said Henry, probably following a 
line of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times 
before him.  "Do she and Comus hit it off at all well together?"

"Oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion," said Francesca.  "I must 
arrange for them to see more of each other in future.  By the way, 
that little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes to 
Thaleby this term.  I'll write and tell Comus to be specially kind 
to him; that will be a sure way to Emmeline's heart.  Comus has 
been made a prefect, you know.  Heaven knows why."

"It can only be for prominence in games," sniffed Henry; "I think 
we may safely leave work and conduct out of the question."

Comus was not a favourite with his uncle.

Francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastily 
scribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid 
disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were 
brought to his notice, and commanded to his care.  When she had 
sealed and stamped the envelope Henry uttered a belated caution.

"Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about the 
boy to Comus.  He doesn't always respond to directions you know."

Francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother's 
opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled penny 
stamp is probably yet unborn.

CHAPTER II

LANCELOT CHETROF stood at the end of a long bare passage, 
restlessly consulting his watch and fervently wishing himself half 
an hour older with a certain painful experience already registered 
in the past; unfortunately it still belonged to the future, and 
what was still more horrible, to the immediate future.  Like many 
boys new to a school he had cultivated an unhealthy passion for 
obeying rules and requirements, and his zeal in this direction had 
proved his undoing.  In his hurry to be doing two or three 
estimable things at once he had omitted to study the notice-board 
in more than a perfunctory fashion and had thereby missed a 
football practice specially ordained for newly-joined boys.  His 
fellow juniors of a term's longer standing had graphically 
enlightened him as to the inevitable consequences of his lapse; the 
dread which attaches to the unknown was, at any rate, deleted from 
his approaching doom, though at the moment he felt scarcely 
grateful for the knowledge placed at his disposal with such lavish 
solicitude.

"You'll get six of the very best, over the back of a chair," said 
one.

"They'll draw a chalk line across you, of course you know," said 
another.

"A chalk line?"

"Rather.  So that every cut can be aimed exactly at the same spot.  
It hurts much more that way."

Lancelot tried to nourish a wan hope that there might be an element 
of exaggeration in this uncomfortably realistic description.

Meanwhile in the prefects' room at the other end of the passage, 
Comus Bassington and a fellow prefect sat also waiting on time, but 
in a mood of far more pleasurable expectancy.  Comus was one of the 
most junior of the prefect caste, but by no means the least well-
known, and outside the masters' common-room he enjoyed a certain 
fitful popularity, or at any rate admiration.  At football he was 
too erratic to be a really brilliant player, but he tackled as if 
the act of bringing his man headlong to the ground was in itself a 
sensuous pleasure, and his weird swear-words whenever he got hurt 
were eagerly treasured by those who were fortunate enough to hear 
them.  At athletics in general he was a showy performer, and 
although new to the functions of a prefect he had already 
established a reputation as an effective and artistic caner.  In 
appearance he exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name.  His large 
green-grey eyes seemed for ever asparkle with goblin mischief and 
the joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of 
some wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo 
horns fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair.  The chin was 
firm, but one looked in vain for a redeeming touch of ill-temper in 
the handsome, half-mocking, half-petulant face.  With a strain of 
sourness in him Comus might have been leavened into something 
creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain 
whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater 
purposes of life.  Perhaps no one would have called him a lovable 
character, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects he 
was certainly damned.