velvet, if it could be so described, was not of so rich and
comfortable a pile after all. For Lord Woldo's situation involved many
and heavy responsibilities and was surrounded by grave dangers. He
was the representative of an old order going down in the unforeseeable
welter of twentieth-century politics. Numbers of thoughtful students
of English conditions spent much of their time in wondering what would
happen one day to the Lord Woldos of England. And when a really great
strike came, and a dozen ex-artisans met in a private room of a West
End hotel, and decided, without consulting Lord Woldo or the Prime
Minister or anybody, that the commerce of the country should be
brought to a standstill, these thoughtful students perceived that even
Lord Woldo's situation was no more secure than other people's; in fact
that it was rather less so.

There could be no doubt that the circumstances of Lord Woldo furnished
him with food for thought--and very indigestible food too.... Why, at
least one hundred sprightly female creatures were being brought up in
the hope of marrying him. And they would all besiege him, and he could
only marry one of them--at once!

Now as Edward Henry stopped as near to No. 262 as the presence of
a waiting two-horse carriage permitted, he saw a grey-haired and
blue-cloaked woman solemnly descending the steps of the portico of
No. 262. She was followed by another similar woman, and watched by a
butler and a footman at the summit of the steps and by a footman
on the pavement and by the coachman on the box of the carriage. She
carried a thick and lovely white shawl, and in this shawl was Lord
Woldo and all his many and heavy responsibilities. It was his fancy
to take the air thus, in the arms of a woman. He allowed himself to be
lifted into the open carriage, and the door of the carriage was shut;
and off went the two ancient horses, slowly, and the two adult fat men
and the two mature spinsters, and the vehicle weighing about a ton;
and Lord Woldo's morning promenade had begun.

"Follow that!" said Edward Henry to the chauffeur and nipped into his
brougham again. Nobody had told him that the being in the shawl was
Lord Woldo, but he was sure that it must be so.

In twenty minutes he saw Lord Woldo being carried to and fro amid the
groves of Hyde Park (one of the few bits of London earth that did not
belong to him or to his more or less distant connections) while the
carriage waited. Once Lord Woldo sat