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Far off across the field below the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along on his way to the links, with his head held high, his stick swinging in his hand, his two retrievers at his heels.
Lady Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical whisper: "His lordship has arrived, my lady."
Whatever happened he would still be Lord Ashbridge, with his grey top-hat and his large carnation and his enviable position. "You will have heard what Sir James's opinion is about your poor mother," he said. "It was in consequence of what he recommended when he talked over the future with me that I came to see you."
If the Emperor had thought that his taking up a musical career was indelibly disgraceful as Lord Ashbridge himself had done he would certainly not have made himself so agreeable.
"You, too," he said, "it would obviate the interruption of your work, about which you feel so keenly. You would be able to go on with it. Of myself, I don't think at all. I shall be lonely, no doubt, at Ashbridge, but my own personal feelings must not be taken into account. Yes; it seems to me a very sensible notion. We shall have to see what your mother says to it.
But Lord Ashbridge, though himself a peer, by no means accepted the peerage en bloc as representing the English aristocracy; to be, in his phrase, "one of us" implied that you belonged to certain well-ascertained families where brewers and distinguished soldiers had no place, unless it was theirs already.
"I thought it best to treat your absurd schemes with a certain lightness, and I have only succeeded in irritating you." Michael was perfectly aware that he had scored. And as his object was to score he made another criticism. "When you say 'absurd schemes, sir," he said, with quiet respect, "are you not still laughing at them?" Lord Ashbridge again retreated strategically.
"And here he is," said the nurse reassuringly as he entered. Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when he met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this moment Sir James was being summoned.
By the merciful decrees of Providence, you see, girls on the whole want us as much as we want them. That's what makes it all so jolly." Michael went down next day to Ashbridge, where Aunt Barbara and Francis were to follow the day after, and found, after the freedom and interests of the last six months, that the pompous formal life was more intolerable than ever.
When Ashbridge retired, the Municipal League reported: "The four years of the Ashbridge administration have passed into history leaving behind them a scar on the fame and reputation of our city which will be a long time healing.
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