This afternoon, though, the Squire lacks his usual serene poise. His self-confidence has been shaken, and it is his young sons who have disturbed its delicately adjusted equilibrium.
He was puzzled.
It is a mistake to imagine that selfish and ungrateful people fail to recognise these qualities in others. Not only are they quick to perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise of their opposites in their fellow men.
Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.
Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in conversation, were "fine shades" and "fineness" in its most psychological sense. "Fineness" was a quality he was for ever belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.
And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.
What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated "you do understand, don't you, father?" rang in his ears.
How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?
Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his children that were by no means equally clear to him.
Why was this?