rry had caught the phrase "round the world," and
having once circled the globe in his steam-yacht, he seized the
opportunity to send down the table several striking items concerning
the shallowness of the Mediterranean ports. Though, after all, he
added, it didn't matter; for when you'd seen Athens and Smyrna and
Constantinople, what else was there? And Mrs. Merry said she could
never be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not
to go to Naples on account of the fever.

"But you must have three weeks to do India properly," her husband
conceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous
globe-trotter.

And at this point the ladies went up to the drawing-room.

In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence Lefferts
predominated.

The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr.
van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary
arm-chairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger
man's philippic.

Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian
manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home. Indignation lent him a
scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his
example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak
enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort--no, sir, not even if
he'd married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas. And
what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of
his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already
wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake? If society chose to
open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain
was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure
origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration--and at no
distant date.

"If things go on at this pace," Lefferts thundered, looking like a
young prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, "we
shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses,
and marrying Beaufort's bastards."

"Oh, I say--draw it mild!" Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested,
while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression
of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden's sensitive face.

"Has he got any?" cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears;
and whi