say?"

"Oh! a very rude letter. He told mother that he knew that she would like
him to be near at hand and that they ought to let bygones be bygones,
and that he was sure that she would be glad to hear that he was a
reformed character. Of course he hates all of us."

"What will you all do?"

"Oh! Nothing, of course. We gave him up long ago. By a tiresome
coincidence he's taken rooms in the same house as my secretary, Miss
Rand. I would send her away if she weren't simply invaluable. But it
gives him a kind of a link with us."

"Monty Carfax saw him yesterday. He's lost his left arm, Monty says, and
looks more of an adventurer than ever. So tiresome for your mother, my
dear."

Then, as Lord John began to break away from the group at the fireplace
and move towards them----

"Roddy Seddon told me he might look in this afternoon.... Your mother's
so devoted to him. He seems to understand her so well."

The two ladies faced one another. Their eyes crossed. Lady Carloes
murmured, "Such a splendid fellow!" then, as Lord John's cheerful laugh
broke upon them----

"Isn't Rachel coming down?" she asked.

II

Lady Adela left her brother and Lady Carloes together and crossed over
to the group at the fireplace. Of all her brothers, she liked Richard
best. He seemed to her to be precisely all that a Beaminster should be:
she liked his appearance--his fine domed forehead, his grey hair, his
long rather melancholy face, his austere and orderly figure.

He had to perfection that reserve, that kind benignancy that a
Beaminster ought to have; whenever Lady Adela questioned the foundations
upon which the stability of her life depended he reassured her. Without
saying anything at all, he gravely comforted her. That is what a
Beaminster ought to do.

She knew, as she saw him standing there by the fire, that _he_ would
never doubt his mother. To him she would always be splendid and
magnificent, and with what determination would he expel from him any
base attacks on that loyalty! Lady Adela thought that power to expel
resolutely and firmly everything that attacked the settled assurance of
one's mind the finest thing in the world.

Lord Crewner was a thin, handsome man of any age at all over forty and
under sixty. He was polished and brushed and scrubbed to such an extent
that he looked like an advertisement of some fine old English firm that
produced, at great cost and with wonderful completeness, Fine old
English gentlemen