s a year left him, in his own right, by his mother: it was
unthinkable that he should ever marry. Another thing that
differentiated him from his family was that he possessed a sense of
humour.

It may be as well to state that Harold plays a considerable part in
this story, which is chiefly concerned with a young woman, of whom the
assembled Devitts were speaking in the interval between tea and dinner
on a warm July day. Before setting this down, however, it should be
said that the chief concern of the Devitts (excepting Harold) was to
escape from the social orbit of successful industrialism, in which they
moved, to the exalted spheres of county society.

Their efforts, so far, had only taken them to certain halfway houses on
their road. The families of consequence about Melkbridge were
old-fashioned, conservative folk, who resented the intrusion in their
midst of those they considered beneath them.

Whenever Montague, a borough magistrate, met the buffers of the great
families upon the bench, or in the hunting field, he found them civil
enough; but their young men would have little to do with Lowther, while
its womenfolk ignored the assiduities of the Devitt females.

The drawing-room in which the conversation took place was a large,
over-furnished room, in which a conspicuous object was a picture, most
of which, the lower part, was hidden by padlocked shutters; the portion
which showed was the full face of a beautiful girl.

The picture was an "Etty," taken in part payment of a debt by
Montague's father, but, as it portrayed a nude woman, the old Puritan
had employed a Melkbridge carpenter to conceal that portion of the
figure which the artist had omitted to drape. Montague would have had
the shutters removed, but had been prevailed upon by his wife to allow
them to remain until Victoria was married, an event which, at present,
she had no justification for anticipating.

The late afternoon post had brought a letter for Mrs Devitt, which gave
rise to something of a discussion.

"Actually, here is a letter from Miss Annie Mee," said Mrs Devitt.

"Your old schoolmistress!" remarked Miss Spraggs.

"I didn't know she was alive," went on Mrs Devitt. "She writes from
Brandenburg College, Aynhoe Road, West Kensington Park, London, asking
me to do something for her."

"Of course!" commented the agreeable rattle.

"How did you know?" asked Mrs Devitt, looking up from the letter she
was reading with the help of glass