whereabouts of titled people. If he had a weakness, it was
by his manner of speaking to insinuate that he knew certain noble
persons whom, as a matter of fact, he had never set eyes on; he would
not have told a direct lie on the subject, but his conscience permitted
him a slight equivocation. Major Forsyth was well up in all the gossip
of the clubs, and if he could not call himself a man of the world, he
had not the least notion who could. But for all that, he had the
strictest principles; he was true brother to Mrs. Parsons, and though he
concealed the fact like something disreputable, regularly went to church
on Sunday mornings. There was also a certain straitness in his income
which confined him to the paths shared by the needy and the pure at
heart.

Major Forsyth had found no difficulty in imposing upon his sister and
her husband.

"Of course, William is rather rackety," they said. "It's a pity he
hasn't a wife to steady him; but he has a good heart."

For them Major Forsyth had the double advantage of a wiliness gained in
the turmoil of the world and an upright character. They scarcely knew
how in the present juncture he could help, but had no doubt that from
the boundless store of his worldly wisdom he would invent a solution to
their difficulty.

James had found his uncle out when he was quite a boy, and seeing his
absurdity, had treated him ever since with good-natured ridicule.

"I wonder what they think he can say?" he asked himself.

James was profoundly grieved at the unhappiness which bowed his father
down. His parents had looked forward with such ecstatic pleasure to his
arrival, and what sorrow had he not brought them!

"I wish I'd never come back," he muttered.

He thought of the flowing, undulating plains of the Orange Country, and
the blue sky, with its sense of infinite freedom. In that trim Kentish
landscape he felt hemmed in; when the clouds were low it seemed scarcely
possible to breathe; and he suffered from the constraint of his father
and mother, who treated him formally, as though he had become a
stranger. There was always between them and him that painful topic which
for the time was carefully shunned. They did not mention Mary's name,
and the care they took to avoid it was more painful than would have been
an open reference. They sat silent and sad, trying to appear natural,
and dismally failing; their embarrassed manner was such as they might
have adopted had he committed some cri