For that something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not disguise from himself.

He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully judged him.

He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter edge to it.

Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of mind.

Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.
"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her, one evening in the early November dusk.