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Was it too late to say she wanted the child back and put up a fight for him? But how could she fight the lord on her own? There was no one she could turn to for help in this case, not even Matthew; for instinctively she knew that Matthew was glad she had let the child go.

The sailor walked along the Newcastle quay. He was tall and thin and weatherbeaten; he wore a thick blue serge suit and a doth cap, at the sides of which could be seen fair hair that was bleached to a silver whiteness. In one hand he carried a valise, while the other hand supported a canvas bag on his shoulder.

When he reached the end of the quay he turned and looked back at the ship he had just left, which, compared with the others lying alongside it, looked a dirty tramp, and when from the top of the gangway he saw a hand go up he bounced his head once towards it.

Leaving the quay, he threaded his way through the narrow streets, up Pilgrim Street, past the inns, the flax dressers, the cheese mongers and the open fronted shops until he came to the corner of New Bridge Street, where three cabs stood waiting for hire. The first cabman, seeing that his fare was a sailor, and knowing that sailors were free with their money, especially when they had just come off a voyage, relieved him almost in a flash of his bags while asking, "Where to.

Mate? "

"Houghton Hall."

"Houghton Hall?" The man stopped in his placing of the bags on the rack, and he turned his head and looked at his fare.

"Houghton Hall, you said?"

"Yes, that's what I said. Do you know it?"

"Aye; yes. Yes; but 'tis a long way out."

"You'll be paid."

Although the man was young, the cabby recognized that the voice held authority, as did the look in the eyes. Without further ado he opened the door of the coach and handed his passenger up, then mounted the box, and soon they were threading their way through the press of traffic in the town. But not until they had passed The Side and crossed the Tyne Bridge could he put the horses into a gallop.

They went through Gateshead, Felling, and Pelaw, and here they bypassed Hebbum and by a narrow road cut across open country. At one point the cabman drew the horses to a halt and, bending down to the window, called, "I'm not quite sure of me way,

Sir. " He did not make the mistake of using the misnomer of mate now, and his passenger, looking out of the window, pointed.

"Fork left; the main gate is about a mile farther on."

At the main gate the porter surveyed the dingy conveyance for a moment before slowly unlocking the gates, and then as the carriage passed him and he saw the face under the cloth cap, the face that he hadn't seen for almost four years, but which he instantly recognized, he touched his forelock, shouting as the coach rode on, "Welcome home to you.

Sir. "

The sound of the approaching cab brought the second footman to the top of the steps. He was a new addition to the household, having been in His Lordship's service for only three months, and when he saw the sailor with a canvas bag and battered valise leaving what was obviously a hired cab, he stiffened and, adopting his most haughty manner, asked,

"What is your business. Sir?"

"Get out of my way." The voice sounded weary, and after the sailor had passed the man he turned and thrust the kit bag and the valise at him, saying, "See these go to my room." And comprehension hitting the footman like a stone, he muttered obsequiously, "Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir."

In the hall he encountered Hatton; and the butler, after standing perfectly still for a moment, his lower jaw sagging, pulled himself quickly together and advanced towards the sailor, saying, "Oh, Mr.

Clive. I'm . I'm very pleased to see you home again. "

"You are, Hatton?" The dear grey eyes had a piercing quality.

"Thank you."

The butler stared at the roughly dad young master who didn't talk like the youth he remembered and in some strange way no longer held any resemblance to him, and whose tone had a coarseness, but a commanding coarseness, about it.

"Where is His Lordship?"

"He... he's up in the nursery, Sir."

The fair brows drew together, hooding the eyes.

"In the nursery, did you say?"

"Yes, Sir. With... with Master Richard."

The head came forward, the eyes became slits. The enquiry was quiet.

"Master Richard?"

"Yes, Sir." Under the scrutiny the butler's composure was chipping, and now he added quickly, "If ... if you would care to go into the drawing room or, or His Lordship's study, I will inform His Lordship that...."

"There's no need." The hand was flapped carelessly back at him.

"I

think I can still find my way about. The nursery you said? " The head was turned over the shoulder, the eyes hard on him again, and Hatton swallowed before he answered, " Yes, Sir. "

He went slowly up the stairs looking first to one side and then the other at the hall below. The place had been done up, it was lighter.

This was a different carpet on the stairs from what he remembered.

Master Richard in the nursery. What was this? It could only mean that Isabelle was married. Well, well; and so they now had a Master Richard.

Two maids, carrying slop buckets, stopped dead on the landing and gaped at the sailor walking towards them, and they stood still while he passed them, widening his eyes at them in imitation of their amazed staring. Then they scurried away.

As he mounted the nursery stairs he commented to himself. Cream and grey; she always said she would have the place redecorated one day.

When he reached the landing he heard childish laughter coming from the door at the far end. A nursemaid, not unlike the one he and Isabelle had had, came out of the doorway and she, too, stopped dead and gaped at him.

She was barring his way into the room now, and so, bowing his head towards her, he said quietly, but firmly, "If you please," at the same time moving her gently aside with the back of his hand. And then he walked forward into the old day nursery where he had played, and later painted and drank, But this was not the old nursery, this place was bright with color.

His immediate glance took in a gaily painted rocking horse, and a quarter life-sized coach; the model sprung as if the real thing and drawn by a wooden horse on wheels. There was a child climbing into the coach, but it paused on the step and, turning round, said, "Grandpapa,"

then stopped and looked towards the man in the sailor's clothes and added, "Why look. Grandpapa, a gentleman!"

Lord Fischel straightened up, turned and saw his son, and for a moment his heart raced so quickly that he thought he was about to have a seizure.

It was Clive who spoke first. Going forward, his eyes on the face that seemed younger to him than when he had last seen it, he said,

"Good-day, Sir."

"Clive 1 Why ... why I didn't know you were in; I never heard. They should have informed me. Why, dear me." He was flustered. He moved his hand up to his brow and with his two middle fingers rubbed it as if trying to smooth out the furrows.

The cold grey eyes moved over the now twitching face.

"I hope I find you well, Father?"

"Yes, yes, thank you, Clive. I'm very well. And ... and you?"

"Oh, I am very well, thank you. Tough, strong, weatherbeaten; the sea does a great many things tor you." He nodded at his father and watched the blood slowly recede from under his skin, then he turned and looked down at the child who was standing staring up at him, and he said to him, "And I understand your name is Richard, young man?"

"Yes, Sir; what is yours?"

"My name is Clive."

"Have you come to play with my coach?"

"Not exactly; but it's a very fine coach, I can see that."

"Grandpapa bought it for my birthday. I am three."

The fair brows moved upward again. Three was he? His mind did some swift calculation. She must have married almost immediately. He led up to further details by asking, "I hope Isabelle is quite well?"

"Yes, she's quite well" When his father turned away and walked towards the nursery door he turned with him, saying, "Whom did she marry?"

For answer His Lordship now called, "Nannie!" and when the nurse appeared in the doorway he said, "See to your charge," and she dipped her knee and said, "Yes, m'Lord." And he walked from the nursery on to the landing, and it was as he was walking down the stairs that he said quietly, "Isabelle is not married."

"0-oh!" He suppressed the huhl So that was it. But he wasn't surprised. Oh no; he wasn't surprised. And looking back and remembering his sister he was only surprised that it hadn't happened earlier, say when she was fifteen, even fourteen.

They had reached the ground floor and were making for the study when Give asked, "Is Isabelle here?" and His Lordship, entering the room, said, "Yes; Isabelle is here." Then seating himself behind his desk he said to his son, "Be seated," and asked, "Would you like a drink of some sort?" When Clive replied, "Yes. Yes, I would," he rang the bell.

Hatton appeared and kept his gaze focused on his master, and His Lordship said briefly, "Bring the decanters."

It wasn't until they both had a glass in their hands and His Lordship had sipped twice at his that he said, "There's something that you should know right away, Clive." He did not look at his son as he went on rapidly now, "The child you saw is not Isabelle's, it is your child, your son."

Clive had just taken a drink, not a sip, from his glass and now he choked on it and had to bend forward, his hand to his mouth. The water was springing from his eyes and running down his nose and he dabbed his face with a han kerchief and sat gasping and staring at his father.

But he made no comment, not a word, and His Lordship, waiting until the spasm was quite passed, said, "The child was being brought up in poverty and squalor, so I could not allow it to go on.

But I made sure it was your child before I took any steps. He is the exact replica of your grandfather, didn't you notice it? "

Notice it? The child had just been a child, Isa- belle's child, so he would have expected it to look like a Fischel, a typical Fischel, dark-eyed, dark-haired, long-nosed. He himself, being so fair, was an oddity, or a hark back to his maternal grandfather who had been a Norwegian. He drank from his glass again. He was staggered; the wind had certainly been taken out of his sails before he had been on board five minutes, so to speak.

For days now, even months, he had rehearsed what he was going to say to his father at their first meeting. He was going to give him a detailed graphic picture of life at sea, seen and suffered through the eyes of a boy who had been gently bred, a boy who had been thrust into the stinking bowels of a ship with the deep raked scum of the earth for his companions;

who had been kicked, spat on, and flogged for no other reason that that he had come from the gentry. A boy who had suffered seasickness for three long months and to such an extent that it brought him near to death, and who was alive today only because the Captain himself had called a check to his first and second mates' discipline, a discipline patterned to give the whole crew hell but particularly the youngest member.

In this tale he had intended to dwell a long time on the joy he felt as he watched the first mate, who had been swept overboard, or perhaps had been pushed, being torn alive by barracuda, and of his glee when he had seen the second mate stabbed during a fight in a brothel; and in the telling he had meant to convey his hate for the man who had brought out depths in himself that he was ashamed of. And finally he had meant to end by emphasizing that the act that had caused his banishment had been but a "God bless you" compared with the things he had achieved along the same lines during the past four years.

But now, here was his father telling him he had a son. That child upstairs was his son. But what of it? He could have many sons. His sons could be dotted all over the Far East; in every port he had docked he had left his seed in black, brown, and white bellies.

"Have you nothing to say? Didn't the boy impress you?"

"Impress me?" He made a deep laughing sound in his throat, then moved his head in a wide sweep; and he was about to speak again when the door burst open and Isabelle stood staring at him across the room.

"Olivel" He rose slowly to his feet.

"Hello, Isabelle."

"Why, Clivel" She was standing dose to him, peering into his face, her eyes searching it as if looking for some remembered feature. This was Clive, the other part of her.

"How are you?" She felt awkward, and it was an unusual feeling for her.

"Very well And you?"

"Oh" --she laughed"--Tm alive."

It was a strange answer and he noticed that when she said it her head made the slightest movement in their father's direction, where he sat stiff-faced behind his desk taking in every nuance of their greeting, while knowing that this was but a polite facade and what they had to say to each other would be said while out of his presence.

Yet what would he have to say to her, his sister, the being who had been as dose to him as his skin? As he stared at her he could not believe that he had once been afraid of her, that he had once been weak enough, timid enough, even loving enough to follow her lead. He saw that she was vastly changed for she had the appearance of a woman well into her twenties, and what beauty she had was a hard beauty. Yet looking into the brown blackness of her eyes he knew that inside she was still the same, still a dynamic, wayward, vicious being, and perhaps more so now than ever before. He knew that during the last four years there had erupted in himself passions that were natural to her. He had got release from some of them, but what about her? Well, he supposed, being that this was Isabelle, he'd soon find out.

When she said, "Have you seen Richard?" and he raised his eyebrows and made a slight motion with his head she laughed aloud. Her laughter brought her father to his feet, and on this she turned and looked at him, her glance cold and distant. Then turning to dive again, her laughter higher now, her eyes glinting, she said, "Richard and I are great friends. He calls me Auntie, but he said yesterday that he would have liked me for his mama. Now isn't that quaint?"