stances
had greatly enriched him, and as he detested his brother and successor,
he had left his pictures to the nation and all of his fortune which he
could dispose of--which happened to be the bulk--to his natural son,
George Goring. But his will had not been found for some weeks after his
death, and while the present Marquis had believed himself the inheritor
of the whole property, he had treated the nameless and penniless child
of his brother with perfect delicacy and generosity. When George Goring
found himself made rich at the expense of his uncle, he proposed to his
cousin Lady Augusta and was accepted.

Mildred was partly amused and partly bored to discover herself on so
friendly a footing with Lady Augusta. Putting herself into that passive
frame of mind in which revelations of Milly's past actions were most
often vouchsafed to her, she saw herself type-writing in a small,
high-ceilinged room looking out on a foggy London park, and Lady Augusta
seated at a neighboring table, surrounded by papers. Type-writing was
not then so common as it is now, and Milly had learned the art in order
to give assistance to Ian. Mildred was annoyed to find herself in danger
of having to waste her time in a mechanical occupation which she
detested, or else of offending a woman whom her uncle valued as a friend
and political ally.

It was a slight compensation to receive an invitation to accompany the
Iretons to a great ball at Ipswich House. There was no question of Ian
accompanying her. He was usually too tired to care for going out in the
evening and went only to official dinners and to the houses of old
friends, or of people with whom he had educational connections. It did
not occur to him that it might be wise to put a strain upon himself
sometimes, to lay by his spectacles, straighten his back, have his beard
trimmed and appear at Mildred's side in the drawing-rooms where she
shone, looking what he was--a husband of whom she had reason to be
proud. More and more engrossed by his own work and responsibilities, he
let her drift into a life quite apart from his, content to see her world
from his own fireside, in the sparkling mirror of her talk.

Ipswich House was a great house, if of little architectural merit, and
the ball had all the traditional spectacular splendor common to such
festivities. The pillared hall and double staircase, the suites of
spacious rooms, were filled with a glittering kaleidoscopic crowd of
fair and