Among these was the great general himself, whose head of
silver and face of bronze, like that of a brazen eagle, were often
to be found bent over the charts and folios of the library. The
great Lord Hastings believed in science and study, as in other
severe ideals of life, and had given much paternal advice on the
point to young Boyle, whose appearances in that place of research
were rather more intermittent. It was from one of these snatches of
study that the young man had just come out through the glass doors
of the library on to the golf links. But, above all, the club was so
appointed as to serve the social conveniences of ladies at least as
much as gentlemen, and Lady Hastings was able to play the queen in
such a society almost as much as in her own ballroom. She was
eminently calculated and, as some said, eminently inclined to play
such a part. She was much younger than her husband, an attractive
and sometimes dangerously attractive lady; and Mr. Horne Fisher
looked after her a little sardonically as she swept away with the
young soldier. Then his rather dreary eye strayed to the green and
prickly growths round the well, growths of that curious cactus
formation in which one thick leaf grows directly out of the other
without stalk or twig.
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