“What do you mean?” Lord Hawkston asked.
James Taylor hesitated for a moment before he said,
“I think, unlike you and me, he cannot adjust himself to the solitude. It is hard, as we both know, to live alone, to face long evenings with no one to talk to and to realise that one has to ride perhaps miles to find a friendly face.”
James Taylor spoke quietly and there was a note of sympathy in his voice, but Lord Hawkston’s tone was hard as he enquired,
“What is he doing – drinking?”
James Taylor nodded.
“What else?”
“He is messing things up rather badly.”
“In what way?”
For a moment there was no answer and Lord Hawkston said,
“Tell me the truth, James, and I don’t want it tied up with blue ribbon.”
“Very well then,” James Taylor said. “Speaking frankly he has broken the rules where
