As they
never lived in London, Robin had no home there except his little house in
Half Moon Street. He had one brother, renowned as a polo player, and one
sister, who was married to a rising politician, Lord Evelyn Clowes, a
young man with a voluble talent, a peculiar power of irritating
Chancellors of the Exchequer, and hair so thick that he was adored by the
caricaturists.
Robin Pierce and Carey saw little of each other now, being generally
separated by a good many leagues of land and sea, but when they met they
were still fairly intimate. They had some real regard for each other.
Carey felt at ease in giving his violence to the quiet and self-possessed
young secretary, who was three years his junior, but who sometimes seemed
to him the elder of the two, perhaps because calm is essentially the
senior of storm. He had even allowed Robin to guess at the truth of his
feeling for Lady Holme, though he had never been explicit, on the subject
to him or to anyone. There were moments when Robin wished he had not been
permitted to guess, for Lady Holme attracted him far more than any other
woman he had seen, and he had proposed to her before she had been carried
off by her husband. He admired her beauty, but he did not believe that it
was her beauty which had led him into love. He was sure that he loved the
woman in her, the hidden woman whom Lord Holme and the world at
large--including Carey--knew nothing about.
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