After a morning’s reflection Francis sent a telegram:

The eagerness in the telegram was not from the heart. Francis did not want to marry Ismay, or anybody; he discovered that what he really wanted was to be in love, but not tied down to marriage, of which his experience had not been particularly appetizing. Against abortion he had an insuperable Catholic objection, partnered by an equally insuperable Calvinist objection that sprang from his association with Victoria Cameron. How had it happened? Why had he not taken precautions? The answer to that was that he thought precautions unromantic, and with Ismay at Tintagel, everything must be romantic. A standing prick has no conscience; that was a piece of bleak wisdom he had acquired at Colborne College, and that would certainly be the way the Glassons would look at it. The fact that he had not meant it in that spirit at all simply could not be explained and was irrelevant to the situation. What was to be done? He couldn’t for a moment think of leaving Ismay in the lurch, quite apart from the fact that the Glassons and his own parents would probably hunt him down and kill him if he did such a dirty trick. His career, about which he had no firm plans but vast, unmoulded expectations, would be a ruin, for Ismay only fitted into that scene as The Ideal Beloved, not by any means as a wife and mother. He was to be the Grail Knight who ventured forth, returning to his lady only between adventures. But after all thoughts of this sort had been rehearsed again and again, the nagging feeling crept into his consciousness that he was really a very dim young man, considering that he was twenty-six and thought to be clever.

Greeting the Glassons in his new character caused him greater dread than reunion with a pregnant Ismay. He had not then got, nor would he ever get, Dr. Upper fully out of his system, and deep within himself he thought that he had done a dirty thing, and would doubtless be appropriately punished. But when he arrived at the nearest railway station to St. Columb’s Hall the Glasson parents greeted him with more warmth than they had ever shown before, and his most difficult task was to kiss Ismay on the station platform with the proper sort of affection—as accepted wooer rather than as too successful seducer. Nobody said anything about what was in all their minds until after tea, when Roderick Glasson suggested with terrible casualness that he and Francis might take a walk.

All that was said on that walk was said a score of times afterward, the intention becoming clearer every time. It was too bad that things had been a little premature, but Francis must realize that we were living in 1935, and not in the dark ages of Queen Victoria, and with clever management all would be well. The marriage would take place in a little over a fortnight’s time; the banns had already been called once in the parish church. It would be a quiet affair—not more than sixty or seventy people. Then Ismay and Francis would go somewhere on an extended wedding trip, and when they returned in a year or so with a child, who was to be the wiser? Whose business was it, after all, but the family’s?

Francis was aware that this was a path that had already been travelled in the family history, but Roderick Glasson could not have known why it struck so coldly into his heart. It was from Victoria Cameron that he had heard of his parents’ return from such a wedding trip with the Looner. God! Would this child be another such goblin as that? Did he carry that dark inheritance? Reason was against it, but a strain of the mythical in Francis’s thinking put reason firmly in its place. Was the Looner a punishment for something? He dared not contemplate what it might be, for he was sure his parents had never put themselves in such a pickle as he and Ismay had done. Everything about them made it unthinkable. In any case he was unquestionably his father’s truly begotten son; the family face was the clearest evidence. The Looner must have been bad luck of some sort. But what sort?

It was incoherent; it was superstitious; it was irrational, this mass of torturing speculation, but it was unquestionably real. And what did the telegram mean that reached him from Canada?

Money arrangements? He had already had some hint of that. The Glassons, Roderick explained during another walk, were feeling the pinch, as did all landowners. Rents had not kept up with expenditures; taxes were punitive; without heavy investment in equipment agriculture could not survive. New money spent on the estate was imperative if large sales of portions of land that had been part of the Glasson patrimony for generations were to be avoided. Not that sales would bridge the gap for long. Roderick had looked into the future fearlessly, and he saw only one hope for St. Columb Hall and its estates, and that hope was—new money. It was a case of substantial refinancing now or—well, eventual ruin.

Had Francis ever given any thought to agriculture? No, Francis had not. He didn’t think he wanted to be a landowner and farmer.

Roderick laughed, almost musically. No question of that. The estate must go to Roderick, his only son. Not that it was tied down by law, but that was how it had always been. However, young Roderick had set his heart on a career in Whitehall, and certainly he seemed to have a talent that way. Now if—just suppose—Francis and Ismay lived at a very decent dower house on the property, and Roderick and Prudence lived at the Hall until at last they were forced by the inevitable to leave it (manly acceptance of age and death here, almost like the “business” of a none too accomplished actor), it would be possible to totally re-finance the estate, and a family property—Francis was already a cousin and would soon be doubly family—would be revitalized in the best possible way. Francis wouldn’t have to worry about the farm; Roderick knew farming like the palm of his hand, and they had an excellent agent who, with real money strength behind him, would put things in apple-pie order before you knew it. In time, young Roderick would return, and anyway he would always have St. Columb’s behind him. Francis could do whatever he pleased. Paint, if he liked. Mess about with Cornish history and legend, if it suited him. He would be, Roderick thought the phrase was, a sleeping partner. It was not said how the sleeping partner was to benefit, except in terms of moral satisfaction.