and Lady Isabel were sincerely attached to one another, and that she
took his part, quite frequently, against the children.

If, accepting the tom-cat standard of paternity, Dick Talbot-Lowry had
a preference for one kitten more than another, that kitten was,
indisputably, Christian.

"The little devil knows the hounds better than I do!" he would say to
a brother M.F.H. at the Puppy Show. "Her mother can't keep her out of
the kennels. And the hounds are mad about her. I believe she could
take 'em walking-out single-handed!"

To which the brother M.F.H. would probably respond with perfidious
warmth: "By Jove!" while, addressing that inner confidant, who always
receives the raciest share of any conversation, he would say that
_he'd_ be jiggered before he'd let any of _his_ children
mess the hounds about with petting and nonsense.

In justice to Lady Isabel, it should be said that she shared the
visiting M.F.H.'s view of the position, though regarding it from a
different angle.

"Christian, my dearest child," she said, on the day following the
Puppy Show that had coincided with Christian's eighth birthday, when,
after a long search, she had discovered her youngest daughter, seated,
tailor-wise, in one of the kennels, the centre of a mat of hounds.
"This is not a _not_ a place for you! You don't know _what_
you may not bring back with you--"

"If you mean fleas, Mother," replied Christian, firmly, "the hounds
have none, except what _I_ bring them from Yummie." (Yummie was
Lady Isabel's dog, a sickly and much despised spaniel). "The Hounds!"
Christian laughed a little; the laugh that is the flower of the root
of scorn. Then her eyes softened and glowed. "Darlings!" she murmured,
kissing wildly the tan head of the puppy who, but the day before, had
been rest from her charge.

CHAPTER III

There are certain persons who are born heralds and genealogists; there
are many more to whom these useful gifts have been denied. With
apologies to both classes, to the one for sins of omission, to the
other in the reverse sense, I find that an excerpt from the
Talbot-Lowry pedigree must be inflicted upon them.

With all brevity, let it be stated that Dick Talbot-Lowry possessed a
father, General John Richard, and General John Richard had an only
sister, Caroline. Caroline, fair and handsome, like all her family,
was "married off," as was the custom of her period, at the age of
seventeen, to elderly Anthony Coppinger, c