s would go no further. Lady Channice had
been either too much offended or too much frightened by the years of
ostracism, or perhaps it was really by her own choice that she adopted
the attitude of a person who saw people when they came to her but who
never went to see them. This attitude, accepted by the few, was resented
by the many, so that hardly anybody ever called upon Lady Channice. And
so it was that Mrs. Grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in
her staunch visits to the recluse of Charlock House, and could feel
herself as Lady Channice's one wholesome link with the world that she
had rejected or--here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for
years, had whetted Mrs. Grey's curiosity to fever-point--that had
rejected her.

As Augustine grew up the situation became more complicated. It was felt
that as the future owner of Charlock House and inheritor of his mother's
fortune Augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively
seized. People had resented Sir Hugh's indifference to Charlock House,
the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his
marriage, to sell it. But Augustine was yet blameless, and Augustine
would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and Mrs. Grey had
said that she would see to it that Augustine had his chance. "Apparently
there's no one to bring him out, unless I do," she said. "His father, it
seems, won't, and his mother can't. One doesn't know what to think, or,
at all events, one keeps what one thinks to oneself, for she is a good,
sweet creature, whatever her faults may have been. But Augustine shall
be asked to dinner one day."

Augustine's "chance," in Mrs. Grey's eye, was her sixth daughter,
Marjory.

So now the first step up the ladder was being given to Augustine.

He kept his vagueness, his lightness, his coolly pleasant smile, looking
at Mrs. Grey and not at his mother as he answered: "Thanks so much, but
I'm monastic, too, you know. I don't go to dinners. I'll ride over some
afternoon and see you all."

Mrs. Grey compressed her lips. She was hurt and she had, also, some
difficulty in restraining her temper before this rebuff. "But you go to
dinners in London. You stay with people."

"Ah, yes; but I'm alone then. When I'm with my mother I share her life."
He spoke so lightly, yet so decisively, with a tact and firmness beyond
his years, that Mrs. Grey rose, accepting her defeat.

"Then Lady Elliston and I will come ove