, well, that's
nothing." It was gallantly done. She kissed him again, and Lancelot
changed the subject.

"There's Mr. Lingen, isn't there?" he asked, adding, "He's always
here."

"Much more than twenty-five," said his mother, very much aware of Mr.
Lingen's many appearances in Onslow Square. She made one more attempt
at her husband, wishing, as she always did wish, to draw him into the
company. It was not too successful. "Lingen? Oh, a stripling," he said
lightly and rustled the _Morning Post_ like an aspen tree.

"Father always talks as if he was a hundred himself," said Lancelot,
who was not afraid of him. He had to be content with Miss Dacre after
all. The others--the Judge and Lady Bliss, Aunt Mabel and Uncle
Corbet, the Worthingtons, were out of the question. As for Miss
Bacchus--oh, Miss Bacchus was, _at least_, five hundred, said
Lancelot, and wished to add up all the ages to see if they came to a
multiple of twelve and a half.

Meanwhile Mr. Macartney in his leisurely way had risen from the table,
cigar in mouth, had smoothed his hair before the glass on the
chimney-piece, looked at his boots, wriggled his toes in them with
gratifying results, adjusted his coat-collar, collected his letters in
a heap, and left the room. They saw no more of him. Half an hour later
the front door shut upon him. He had gone to his office, or, as he
always said, Chambers.

He was rather bleak, and knew it, reckoning it among his social
assets. Reduced into a sentence, it may be said of Macartney that the
Chief Good in his philosophy was to be, and to seem, successful
without effort. What effort he may have made to conceal occasional
strenuous effort is neither here nor there. The point is that, at
forty-two, he found himself solidly and really successful. The
husband of a very pretty wife, the father of a delightful and healthy
son, the best-dressed solicitor in London, and therefore, you may
fairly say, in the world, with an earned income of some three or four
thousand a year, with money in the funds, two houses, and all the rest
of it, a member of three very old-fashioned, most uncomfortable and
absurdly exclusive clubs--if this is not success, what is? And all got
smoothly, without a crease of the forehead, by means of an eyeglass, a
cold manner and an impassivity which nothing foreign or domestic had
ever disturbed. He had ability too, and great industry, but it was
characteristic of him to reckon these as nothing in the