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There was a saying come down in the family that likely had its roots in the activities of the first Fischel. It went: If a man turns his coat he must be prepared to wear it inside out. But the implication of the saying had changed, for it now stressed the integrity and honor of the family, implying that their ancestors might have been devils, but devils with honor.

The last devil had been the present Lord Fischel's grandfather and the deadliest of the bunch it was said, and John Horatio James Fischel, the present holder of the title, hadn't a doubt of this. He had met his grandfather only twice, the first time at the funeral of his grandmother, the second occasion on the night before he died. The chaise had come pell mell 75

to his home, which lay thirty miles from the Hall, and the steward brought the message that his grandfather was dying after being savagely kicked by one of his horses, and that he wished to see his son and his grandson. There had been no invitation for his sister, Anna, who was the eldest, nor his brother. Henry, yet that had been understandable since Henry was only four years old then. He remembered being very cold on the long ride to the Hall and then very hot when he stood in his grandfather's bedroom, for there was a fire blazing that would have roasted an ox.

It was when he had mounted the step to the bed and could see his grandfather plainly that he knew he was making his first acquaintance with the devil. It wasn't only the red face, the black eyes, the pointed eyebrows, and wild looking grey-streaked hair; it was the shape of him, for his stomach pushed up the bedclothes into a great mound.

On the day his grandfather was buried, his father had said to him, "He has all of eternity in which to repent, yet I doubt whether it will be long enough." And that was the only time his father mentioned his grandfather's name to him.

But he hadn't lived at Houghton Hall a matter of days before he had the whole history of his grandfather; and if he hadn't heard it within that time it is doubtful whether he would ever have heard it at all, for within a week his father had made a clean sweep of the servants, old Taplow, the coachman, included;

and it was Taplow, who had always been an ardent admirer of his grandfather, who had given him the unsavory history.

First and foremost, Taplow had stated that His Lordship was a real man, the terror of the county not only with a horse and the bottle, but with the women. He had liked them young, said Taplow; he had always liked them young, and virgins. He'd give you five pounds if you brought him a virgin, but only a pound if she'd been used, even if she was young.

In that way, said Taplow, he had kept many a family from starving come winter. And, he had pointed out, not only had you to look round the villages and the farms for the Fischel nose and the black eyes, for in more than one big house he had left his mark. And another thing: when a couple on the estate were going to be married, if the fellow was wise he'd let His Lordship do the breaking in. Aw, he had been a lad, had His Lordship, and there had been some goings on in the house.

Send the mistress up to London, he would, to buy new clothes, and then high jinks, low jinks. Farmers threatened him with their guns. Aye, but he always got his own back on those; he had his ways, and whether they liked it or not he added one more to their stock.

It was because of Taplow's disclosure that John Fischel understood his own father. His father had always been a stem man, hard but just.

From his earliest years he remembered the small household of five and ten servants meeting each morning at eight o'clock in the Hall for prayers. This was repeated at seven in the evening except when his father was away on business. Sunday was one continuous prayer, broken only at three o'clock when they had their one meal of the day.

As the years went on one trait alone of his grandfather showed in his father. This was the love of land. Yet at the beginning of the century when yet another Enclosure Act was passed, his father had openly condemned his grandfather for enclosing most of the small farms and cottages, thus enlarging his estate, which by the same method previously used had already reached six hundred acres. But it was this very land, he knew, more than the great grey stone house, that had brought his father back to his beginnings when he came into the title, and from the start he showed himself to be the antithesis of his father in that he feared God and ruled with justice, which sometimes took a whip in its hand to wipe out wickedness.

At sixteen he himself had felt the whip because he had dared to say,

"Be damned." And the whip, delivered around the ankles of his sister while she obligingly held up her skirt the required inches above her shoes, would have guided her into a Convent had she been a Catholic.

What it did was to make her the wife of a Minister more than twice her age, much to their father's displeasure, for the Minister happened to belong to the Church of Scotland.

The whip of justice took his young brother. Henry, to France at an early age and there he married a French lady of good family.

Although he himself had suffered from the whip of justice more than either his brother or sister he knew he was the only one of the three who had really loved his father. His father may have been hard but it was hardness aimed against evil, as was the hardness in himself.

Sometimes in the night his conscience would question the hardness and would ask, "Was it because of it that his life had been shattered, that his honorable name had been dragged through the mud, and his career in Parliament choked as it was beginning to draw breath?" But the answer his conscience got was, "No; all this was the result of his blindness in marrying a woman who, in her own way, was as evil as his grandfather had been in his."

But now at the age of forty-eight. Lord Fischel was a lonely, embittered man, looking much older than his years and asking himself on this particular day as he dressed to go down to dinner what he was going to do with his son and daughter. The responsibility for their future, he admitted, was his but the fact irked him greatly. They had irked him since they were born. He had never liked the idea of twins, thinking that such children could only be half of their true selves.

The man would have too much of the woman in him and the woman too much of the man, and this theory, he knew, had worked out in his son and daughter. His son, who should be applying himself to serious subjects preparatory to going to the University of Oxford, as he himself had done, could think of nothing but painting. Paintingi Whereas his sister, who should be content to learn the business of running the household, together with the accomplishments of embroidery and music, and perhaps an extra language, galloped the country on a horse, never walked when she could run, talked loudly, laughed loudly, and always kept her head level when she prayed. It was a pity, he thought at times, that he hadn't used the whip of justice on them.

They had only been returned to the house a fortnight and the quiet order and routine of his life had been shattered, and was likely to be for some months ahead, for in four weeks' time he must open the London house and face the veiled looks and revived memories in order to launch them, at least Isabelle, into society.

He couldn't understand now how he had been persuaded into the matter, but his sister-in-law, Helen, had pointed out in her letters that the girl was at an age for a suitable marriage, and in her opinion the sooner it was accomplished the better. Although his sister-in-law had the disadvantage of being a French woman who, since the revolution of 1830, had lived in Heidelberg, and had done her best during the last two years to instill into his daughter the graces necessary for social life--though he had to admit that for most of the time there was little evidence of her efforts--she was a woman of common sense and propriety.

Fate having dealt him the blows it had, he wondered why the Lord in His wisdom had not seen fit to give him children whom he could love.

It was strange, he pondered, but as the years went on this feeling for the need to love increased rather than diminished. Looking back, he couldn't see one human in his life whom he had really loved, not even Irene. The feeling he'd had for her, he knew now, had never been love.

Her ever smiling lips and laughing eyes had caused him to crave her body, and when he had accomplished that and found it was all she had to offer, and had turned from her constant demands, she had proffered her favors elsewhere, not discreetly, which he might have borne, if not forgiven, but openly, until her name became a byword. When she had at last left him, and for a man younger than herself, his head became bowed with shame; and even now, eight years later, he was still unable to hold it upright although he gave no outward sign of this.

As his valet helped him into his jacket he heard the sound of trotting horses coming up the drive and he turned his head in the direction of the long window and thought, "That'll be Bellingham."

Hugh Bellingham was his nearest neighbor, in his own class--and yet not quite in his own class, for he was in commerce, not just holding shares but actively so. Concerning himself greatly with the new railroads, Bellingham represented the powerful middle class that was clawing the power from the old reigning families, of which he considered the Fischels one of the foremost. Yet Bellingham was his only link with the outside world, the outside world in this case being London, and he was eagerly awaiting news from there, yet at the same time afraid of what he might hear.

The news that he was anxious to hear did not concern the political situation of the moment, but the gossip that surrounded the woman who was still his wife, and who would remain so until one of them died.

For he considered the very thought of divorce evil. Bellingham's letter of three days before had conveyed to him the disturbing fact that his wife had dared to return to town, and this time with an Italian much older than herself who bore the title of Count and who presumably had unlimited wealth.

The situation that now troubled him was this: If Bellingham brought him the news that his wife was aiming to set up an establishment in London, he could not possibly take up residence there; in which case what was he going to do with those two along the corridor?

The dinner was almost at an end. It had begun with Flemish soup, followed by turbot and fried smelts, after which came roast haunch of venison with vegetables. This in turn was followed by roast grouse and the meal ended with charlotte russe of which Isabelle had two helpings.

She was very fond of puddings; in fact she was very fond of food altogether, yet no matter what amount she ate it did not show itself in flesh, for although seventeen in three days' time, her hips looked nonexistent and her chest almost as flat as her brother's.

As she began her second helping of pudding she made an almost imperceptible movement with her eyelid towards her brother sitting opposite, then slanted her eyes ceiling wise for a second, which caused him to cough and put his hand to his mouth.

No one would have taken the brother and sister for twins for they were quite unlike each other in looks, nor did either show any resemblance to the man sitting at the head of the table, nor would there have been any resemblance to their mother had she been present, dive Fischel, it was said, took after his maternal great-grandmother and was of unusual fairness, while Isabelle looked the image of her paternal great grandfather She only had to stand in the gallery and look at the three portraits of that notorious gentleman and she saw herself at the ages of twenty, thirty, and forty. Since she had been a child, she had taken a secret pride in resembling her great-grandfather, and only she knew that the resemblance was not in her exterior alone. Over the years she had gotten into the habit of talking to the portrait of the elegantly dressed youth and at times led herself to believe that the full sensual lips were answering her.

Only this morning, after the wearisome ritual of prayers and breakfast, she had stood in the gallery and said to the bold, dark face, with its nose seeming to protrude out of the canvas, "I'm weary; I'll erupt if I don't get away from here. There's another month before I go to town. Heidelberg and Aunt Helen had its drawbacks but it was a wild life compared with this. What am I going to do? " She had watched the lips move and she had imagined a deep, throaty voice saying, " Live! " And she had answered it by asking, " But how? " And to this the portrait had only smiled.

Her home she considered to be a cross between a monastery and a convent where her father ruled like a prior, and the housekeeper, Mrs.

Hatton, a mother superior. She had voiced this to her brother as a rather clever quip.

She didn't like her father; but then she liked so few people. She often thought about this, her dislike of people. There was only one person in the wide world for whom she had any affection, and that was Clive;

yet even towards him her feelings were mixed. She could say that she loved him, yet at the same time she hated him because he was so ineffectual. She, like her father, thought their sexes had gotten mixed up--she should have been the man; she was the vibrant one.

She looked at her brother now. She could make him laugh; she had power over him in a number of ways and he could read her every sign. Her raised eyes that had caused him to splatter had indicated her opinion of the quality of the conversation. The conversation should have been of interest to her as her father and Mr. Bellingham were talking of London, but it was the political London they were discussing, not the social London. She turned her head and looked in Bellingham's direction as he said vehemently, "That Sadler, not satisfied with attacking the enclosures, he's now pressing the Ten Hours Bill. The Second Reading was in March and if we're not careful he'll get it through. Did you ever know anything like it?

They're asking for trouble; Malpass's philosophy is the only remedy and those with any sense know it. It's only through poverty and hunger that the population can be kept at balance; feed the mob and where are you? And he wants to bar the employment of children under nine. He wants to bring the country to ruin; burn it down in fact, for where will they get the climbing boys? They're too big over nine. And on a ten-hour day mill owners will go bankrupt. And think of the reorganization in the mines this will cause. The man's mad. Him and his committee, he's had it running hell for leather from April, and it holds out the kind of policy that could bring this country to its knees. You've never read such nonsense as is in his report, such piffling little things as wanting to eliminate strappers from the mills. Where will you get boys to work unless they're strapped?