or so after the moving incidents that have just been
recited, Miss Frederica Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of
that ilk, were spending a long and agreeable Sunday afternoon with
their relatives at Mount Music, elders and youngsters being
segregated, after their kind, and to their mutual happiness.

Major Talbot-Lowry, very well pleased with himself, very tall and
authoritative, was standing, from force of habit, on the rug in front
of the fire-place in the Mount Music drawing-room, and was
cross-examining Miss Coppinger on her proposed arrangements for
herself and her nephew, while he drank his tea in gulps, each
succeeded by burnishing processes, with a brilliant silk bandanna
handkerchief, such as are necessitated by a long and drooping
moustache.

All good-looking people are aware of their good looks, but the gift of
enjoying them, that had been lavishly bestowed on Dick, is denied to
many; on the other hand, the companion gift, of realising when they
are becoming pleasures of memory, had been withheld from him. Dick was
of the happy temperament that believes in the exclusive immortality of
his own charms, and he was now enjoying his conversation with his
cousin none the less for the discovery that Miss Coppinger, who was
younger than he, had preserved her youth very much less successfully
than he had done.

The cross-examination had moved on to the subject of Larry's religion,
and the combative fervour of Major Dick's Protestantism might have
edified John Knox.

"But look here, Frederica," he said, putting down his cup and saucer,
with a crash, on the high mantelpiece, "you don't mean to tell me that
the boy has to go to Mass with the servants--on the cook's lap, I
suppose--on the outside car! Good Heeavens! Poor old Tom! Talk about
turning in his grave! I should think he was going head over heels in
it by this time!"

This referred to the late Colonel Coppinger, the genuineness of whose
conversion to his wife's Church had never been accepted by Major
Talbot-Lowry.

"My _dear_ Dick!" said Lady Isabel.

Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly with an air of high
self-control.

"That is a matter of opinion!" she said blandly. "Tom was perfectly
aware of what changing his religion involved, in this country--though
it's probably quite different in India. In any case, the thing is
done, and as I believe it to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel,
to his chapel he shall go!"

Unimaginative people,