PREFATORY NOTE

It is likely that the brothers in this book will be recognised by some readers who may indict the good taste of revealing a secret guarded jealously during many years. To these let it be said that the brother who attained to the highest honours and dignities of his profession earnestly desired that the truth concerning certain incidents in his earlier career should be told in a biography. A desire he was constrained reluctantly to forego. The story of the Samphires satisfies adequately enough the exigencies of a peculiar case. The many are not concerned; the few will discern truth through the thin veil of fiction.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

[Prologue]

  1. [Bubble and Squeak]
  2. [Billy's *v.* Bashan's]
  3. [Which contains a Fortune]
  4. [Miss Hazelby is Shocked]
  5. [Valete]
  6. [At Burlington House]
  7. [The Hunt Ball]
  8. [Barbizon]
  9. [At King's Charteris]
  10. [After Three Years]
  11. [In Love's Pleasaunce]
  12. [Betty in Stepney]
  13. [Bagshot on the Rampage]
  14. [A Moral Exigency]
  15. [Aphrodite Smiles and Frowns]
  16. [Westchester Cathedral]
  17. [Surrender!]
  18. [Ariadne in Naxos]
  19. [A Sanatorium in Sutherland]
  20. [Betty sees a Sprig of Rue]
  21. [Recuperation]
  22. [On Ben Caryll]
  23. [Hymeneal]
  24. [A Red Tie]
  25. [Mark Hears a Bleating]
  26. [Readjustment]
  27. [In Grub Street]
  28. [A Sunday in Cadogan Place]
  29. [The Procession of Life]
  30. [A Note of Interrogation]
  31. [Betty sees Danger Signals]
  32. [Betty makes Good Resolutions]
  33. [Illumination]
  34. [Charing Cross]
  35. [Chrysostom Returns to Chelsea]
  36. [Fenella]
  37. [Poppy and Mandragora]
  38. [Gonzales]
  39. [At the Miraflores]
  40. ["Come!"]
  41. [The Power Behind the Throne]

BROTHERS

PROLOGUE

Mark Samphire clutched tightly his mother's hand, as the big room began to fill with people. Some he knew, and these he feared: because they might speak to him, and then he would stammer, and choke, and make a piteous spectacle of himself. He wished that he were his brother, Archibald, standing on the other side of his mother, Archie, the pink-skinned and golden-haired, a tremendous fellow clad in a new sailor suit, and tolerably self-possessed, but pinker than usual, because a lady in lavender silk had hugged him and called him "a darling." Nobody called Mark a darling except his mother, and that only when they were alone. The fat butler kept shouting out more names. Mrs. Corrance and Jim arrived. Mark hoped they would sit near him. Jim was his own age—a ripe seven—and a sworn friend. Lord Randolph talked to Admiral Kirtling, the funny man who made everybody laugh. Ah! Jim had pushed his way through the crowd. In a minute the two boys were whispering together, nineteen to the dozen, for Mark seldom stammered when he talked to Jim.

An older person than Mark would have seen on the faces of the assembled company an air of expectation. Big folding-doors, now shut, divided the drawing-room from the library. Upon these the eyes of the women lingered, for behind them stood mystery and—so it was reported—beauty! Meantime they chattered, talking for the most part about the house, newly built, and well named The Whim. Miss Selina Lamb, one of the Lambs from Cranberry-Orcas, who had so many relations that she was never out of half-mourning, gave information to the Dean of Westchester.