elf, and he had taken a singular
precaution with regard to his daughter. Not counting the wife whom he
had too soon ceased to care for, he had a low opinion of all women, and
he distrusted Audrey's temperament, judging it probably by his own and
that of his more intimate acquaintance. By a special clause in his will,
she had to wait for her majority four years longer than the term by law
appointed. Further, until she reached her majority she was to spend six
months of the year at Oxford, near her guardian, for the forming and
informing of her mind--always supposing that she had a mind to form. And
now, at the age of five-and-twenty, being the mistress of her own
person, her own income, and her own house in Chelsea, she was still
looking out for a revelation.

Her cousin, Mr. Vincent Hardy, believed that he had been providentially
invented to supply it. But in the nature of things a cousin whom you
have known familiarly from childhood cannot strike you as a revelation.
He is really little better than a more or less animated platitude.

Vincent Hardy would have been unaffectedly surprised if you had told him
so. To himself he seemed the very incarnation of distinguished paradox.
This simply meant that he was one of those who innocently imagine that
they can defy the minor conventions with a rarer grace than other men.

Certainly his was not exactly the sort of figure that convention expects
to find in its drawing-rooms at nine o'clock in the evening. It was in
Audrey's house in Chelsea, the little brown house with discreet white
storm-shutters, that stands back from the Embankment, screened by the
narrow strip of railed plantation known as Chelsea Gardens. Here or
hereabouts Hardy was to be met with at any hour of the day; and late one
July evening he had settled himself, as usual, near a certain "cosy
corner" in the big drawing-room. His face, and especially his nose, was
bronzed with recent exercise in sun and wind, his hair was limp with the
steam of his own speed, and on his forehead his hat had left its mark in
a deep red cincture. His loose shooting jacket, worn open, displayed a
flannel shirt, white, but not too white. This much of Hardy was raised
and supported on his elbow; the rest of him, encased in knickerbockers,
stockings, and exceedingly muddy boots, sprawled with a naive
abandonment at the feet of the owner of the drawing-room. Lying in this
easy attitude, he delivered himself of the following address--