Then after dinner, with no good-bye to her, he had disappeared by the night train to the south.
And that had been the spirit of all of them, those jolly, rampagious lads, plain or handsome, clever or slow.

Two of them were dead already.

But the one who had thrown ducks and drakes was still, so far as she knew, somewhere in the Ypres salient, unscathed.
And after that she had come home to the atmosphere created by her father's life and character, in this old house where she was born, and in the estate round about it.

It was as though she had only just realized--begun to realize--her father's strangeness.

His eccentricities and unpopularity had meant little to her before.