"Thank you, mother," he said at last. "I shall know very soon, I shall ask her while she is here."
"I can't sit still any more," he said. "Speaking of it has made me restless. I must go and do something violent. Perhaps I will take your advice and go for a row. They will not be here till nearly seven. Oh, by-the-way, Evelyn Dundas is coming, too. You will have someone to flirt with, mother."
"Dear, you say such dreadful things!" said Mrs. Home. "And if you say them while Lady Ellington is here, I shall feel so awkward."
"Well, Evelyn proposed to elope with you last time he was here," said Philip. "I think I shall commission him to paint your portrait."
"Who wants the picture of an old woman like me?" said Mrs. Home. "But get him to do Madge's."
"That's an idea," he said. "He could paint her divinely. Really, mother--if ah! a big 'if.' Do you know, I'm rather uneasy about Evelyn."
"Why? I thought he was getting on so well."
"He is as far as painting goes. They think very highly of him. But the moment he gets a couple of hundred pounds he buys a motor-car or something, and next week his watch is in pawn. Now, when you are twenty-five, it is time to stop doing that."
"I know," said Mrs. Home. "He is dreadful! Last time he was here he gave me a pearl-brooch that must have cost him fifty pounds."
"That was to induce you to run away with him," remarked Philip. "That was quite understood, and I think you behaved rather badly in not doing so."
"No, nor must you! And now I'm going on the river. If I get drowned it will be your fault for having suggested it."
"Ah, do be careful in those locks," said Mrs. Home. "I get so nervous always when the water goes down and down."
"There's more chance of getting drowned when it goes up and up," said her son, kissing her on the forehead as he passed her chair.
Philip Home at the age of thirty-one was, perhaps, as successful a man of his age as any in the financial world. His father, the head of one of the big South African houses, had died some five years before, and since then the burden of a very large and prosperous house had rested almost entirely on his shoulders, which physically as well as morally were broad. But he combined in an extraordinary degree the dash and initiative of youth with a cool-headedness and sobriety of judgment which, in general is not achieved until something of the fire of the other is lost, and his management was both brilliant and safe. Yet, as must always happen, the habit of mind necessary to the successful conduct of large financial interests, which among other ingredients is made up of incessant watchfulness and a certain hardness in judging and acting, had, it must be confessed, somewhat tinged his whole character, and the world in general was right in its estimate of him as a man who was rather brusque and unsympathetic, a man with an iron hand who did not always even remember to put on the velvet glove. This was a perfectly just conclusion as far as the world in general, that is to say, the world of mere acquaintances, was concerned, and Philip's fine collection of prints was considered to be regarded by him as an investment rather than a joy. They made the same judgment about his garden, thinking that the rarity of plants was a quality more highly-prized by him than their beauty. But where the world in general did him an injustice was that they did not allow for a circle which, though small, was far more intimate and vastly more competent to form the true estimate of the man than they, the circle of friends. These were four in number--his mother, Madge Ellington, namely--and the two men to whom allusion has already been made, namely--the Hermit and Evelyn Dundas. They saw, all four of them, a perfectly different Philip to him who somewhat elbowed his way through the uninteresting ranks of acquaintances, or sat, detached from the real essential man, in his orderly office, harsh-faced, unsmiling and absorbed. And this essential Philip in his own sanctum, where only these four ever came, was, indeed, a very lovable and eager personage; and though the world did not know it, his prints really hung there, and in the windows his flowers blossomed. But few were admitted there, and those only not on business.