It was his custom to join the family in the drawing-room after dinner. To-night he was a little delayed by Whippham, with some trivialities about next month's confirmations in Pringle and Princhester. When he came in he found Miriam playing, and playing very beautifully one of those later sonatas of Beethoven, he could never remember whether it was Op. 109 or Op. 111, but he knew that he liked it very much; it was solemn and sombre with phases of indescribable sweetness—while Clementina, Daphne and Mademoiselle Lafarge went on with their war knitting and Phœbe and Mr. Blent bent their brows over chess. Eleanor was reading the evening paper. Lady Ella sat on a high chair by the coffee things, and he stood in the doorway surveying the peaceful scene for a moment or so, before he went across the room and sat down on the couch close to her.
"You look tired," she whispered softly.
"Worries."
"That Chasters case?"
"Things developing out of that. I must tell you later."
It would be, he felt, a good way of breaking the matter to her.
"Is the Chasters case coming on again, Daddy?" asked Eleanor.
He nodded.
"It's a pity," she said.
"What?
