rs, so that Lady Dunstable might escape them. If the fish did
not arrive from Edinburgh, if the motor broke down, if a gun failed, or
a guest set up influenza, it was always Miss Field who came to the
rescue. She had devices for every emergency. It was generally supposed
that she had no money, and that the Dunstables made her residence with
them worth while. But if so, she had none of the ways of the poor
relation. On the contrary, her independence was plain; she had a very
free and merry tongue; and Lady Dunstable, who snubbed everybody, never
snubbed Mattie Field. Lord Dunstable was clearly devoted to her.

She greeted Meadows rather absently.

"Rachel didn't carry you off? Oh, then--I wonder if I may ask you
something?"

Meadows assured her she might ask him anything.

"I wonder if you will save yourself for a walk with Lord Dunstable.
Will you ask him? He's very low, and you would cheer him up."

Meadows looked at her interrogatively. He too had noticed that Lord
Dunstable had seemed for some days to be out of spirits.

"Why do people have sons!" said Miss Field, briskly.

Meadows understood the reference. It was common knowledge among the
Dunstables' friends that their son was anything but a comfort to them.

"Anything particularly wrong?" he asked her in a lowered voice, as they
neared the house. At the same time, he could not help wondering whether,
under all circumstances--if her nearest and dearest were made mincemeat
in a railway accident, or crushed by an earth-quake--this fair-haired,
rosy-cheeked lady would still keep her perennial smile. He had never yet
seen her without it.

Miss Field replied in a joking tone that Lord Dunstable was depressed
because the graceless Herbert had promised his parents a visit--a whole
week--in August, and had now cried off on some excuse or other. Meadows
inquired if Lady Dunstable minded as much as her husband.

"Quite!" laughed Miss Field. "It is not so much that she wants to see
Herbert as that she's found someone to marry him to. You'll see the lady
this afternoon. She comes with the Duke's party, to be looked at."

"But I understand that the young man is by no means manageable?"

Miss Field's amusement increased.

"That's Rachel's delusion. She knows very well that she hasn't been able
to manage him so far; but she's always full of fresh schemes for
managing him. She thinks, if she could once marry him to the right wife,
she and the wife between them could