rice to give if
she could purchase once more the freedom of her girlhood.

CHAPTER XIX.

SIR JOHN'S GLOXINIAS.

Whatever may have been the intention of Nature when she produced Sir
John Pynsent, there was no doubt as to his own conception of the part
which he was fitted to play in the world.

He considered himself, and indeed he was, above all things, a
manipulator of men. His talents in this direction had been displayed at
school and at college, and when he settled down to political life in
London, and impulsively began to suggest, to persuade, to contrive, and
to organize, everyone with whom he came in contact acknowledged a
superior mind, or, at any rate, a more ingenious and fertile mind. He
had refused to bind himself down to an office, as his friends wanted him
to do, or to take part in the direction of a "Central Association" for
dealing with men in the lump. It was absurd to think of tying Sir John
to a place, or a routine, or a pledge of any kind. His art was to be
ubiquitous; he aspired to be the great permeator of the Conservative
party; and by sheer force of activity he soon became the best known and
most popular of the younger generation of Tories.

His triumphs as a manager of men were not confined to public life. He
was one of a numerous family, and he managed them all. Every Pynsent
deferred to Sir John's opinion, not merely because he was the head of
the house, but because he had assumed the command, and justified the
assumption by his shrewdness and common-sense.

The one person in the family who gave most anxiety was his half-sister,
Anna. Sir John's father had married a second time, when his son was a
youth at Eton, and Anna, the fruit of this union, inherited, not only
her mother's jointure of twenty thousand pounds, but a considerable
fortune from her mother's elder brother, who had been a manufacturer in
Vanebury. This fortune had been allowed to accumulate for the last
eighteen years, as her father, and after him, her brother, had provided
her with a home, and disdained to touch "Nan's money." Sir John was a
very good brother to her, and it was even rumored that he had married
early chiefly for the purpose of providing Nan with an efficient
chaperon. Whether this was true or not, he had certainly married a woman
who suited him admirably; Lady Pynsent sympathized in all his tastes and
ambitions, gave excellent dinner parties, and periodically brought a
handsome boy into the world to