ading beauties. Rising, she laid her pretty hand on his shoulder.
"Poor darling, I am sorry I was cross. It is dear of you to mind. I
hated it, too, at first, for poor old Ponty is a gentleman, and he is
awfully cut up. But after all, it may not be a bad thing. She's a very
queer girl, Gerald, not at all easy to live with, and this boy Joyselle
is really nice. Besides, he has plenty of money----"

"By the way," interrupted Carron, tossing the kitten to a soft chair,
"where did he get the money? The fiddling chap can't have much. They say
he's a great spendthrift----"

"No, it isn't that. I mean Isabel Clough-Hardy left it to him. You
remember the moley one who died in Egypt?"

"Did she? He must have been a mere child when she died. You mean Hugh
Hislip's daughter?"

"Yes. Oh, yes, it was years ago. They say she was in love with Victor
Joyselle before she married."

"By Jove! Why didn't he marry her?"

"Because in this unenlightened land no man is allowed to have more than
one wife at a time--Oh, Tommy, what have you been doing?"

Kingsmead, who had come in without knocking, sat down and stretched his
thin legs over the arm of the chair. "Ratting."

"Oh, you nasty child! What a beastly thing!"

"Ratting, my dear mother, is a fine, manly, old-time sport. Most fellows
of my age and appearance would be making love to their mothers' friends,
but I bar women. Sport," he added solemnly, "for Thomas Edward, Earl of
Kingsmead."

Carron, who had always disliked the boy, looked at him. "So you bar
women? Many other 'men of your appearance' have said the same."

It was a nasty thrust, but Tommy, though he felt it, grinned cheerfully.

"_Stung!_" he cried, laying his hand on his heart in an absurd
theatrical gesture. "Your bolt has gone home, my dear fellow. But
experience may take the place of beauty at fifty."

Carron started. He loathed being fifty, he loathed Tommy, he loathed
everything.

Tommy turned to the kitten and talked artless nonsense to it to fill up
the pause that followed, and Lady Kingsmead powdered her nose with a bit
of chamois skin that lived in a silver box full of Fuller's earth under
the _chaise-longue_ pillows.

"Glad Brigit's coming?" asked Tommy, turning with appalling suddenness
to Carron, whose hatred for him increased tenfold as he tried to answer
carelessly.

As he replied, Brigit came in, without a hat, but covered from head to
foot with a rough tweed coat. Her wavy hair was very we