eeling the loss. And now, Mr. Mayne when
they are back at Glen Cottage, I want to know what you will do about
your son."

To do Mr Mayne justice, he was far too perplexed to answer off-hand;
in fact, he was almost rendered dumb by excessive astonishment. To
borrow his own forcible expression, used to his wife afterwards, "he
hardly knew where he was, things were so topsy-turvy."

In the old days, before Dick had produced that wonderful moustache
that was so long in growing, Mr. Mayne had been very partial to his
neighbors at Glen Cottage. It is always pleasant to a man to patronize
and befriend a pretty woman; and Mrs. Challoner was an exceedingly
pretty woman. It was quite an occupation to a busy man like the master
of Longmead to superintend their garden and give his advice on all
subjects that belong to a man's province.

But for the last year, since Dick had so greatly developed in mental
culture, his father had been growing very weary even of the name of
Challoner; it had become a habit with him to decry them on every
possible occasion. "What is in a name?" he would say, when some person
would lament the dead-and-gone glories of Challoner Place. "There is
not a soul belonging to them, except that disreputable Sir Francis;
and he is as good as a beggar."

But since Glen Cottage had given way to the Friary, and the
dressmaking scheme had been carried out, his opposition had become
perfectly frantic: he could have sworn at Dick for his senselessness,
his want of pride, his lamentable deficiency in ambition. "Never, as
long as my name is Richard Mayne, will I give in to that boy," he had
vowed inwardly.

And now there had suddenly started up, like a piece of gilded
clap-trap, this amazing man of inches, calling himself their cousin,
Sir Henry Challoner; a man who was absolutely tired of making
money,--who called Gilsbank, a far finer house than Longmead, a tidy
little place, and who could throw in Glen Cottage, that bijou
residence, as a sort of dower-house for widowed Challoners; a man who
would soon be talked about in Hadleigh, not because he was rich,--most
of the Hadleigh families were rich,--but because he was restoring an
ancient name to something of its old respectability.

Mr. Mayne was essentially a shrewd, far-sighted man. Like other
self-made men, he attached great importance to good blood. In a moment
he realized that Nan Challoner of the Friary was a very different
person from Nan Challoner of Glen