en
a great deal with humbler but richer people's daughters. The Countess
was brought up to matrimony. She was aimed and timed to hit a given mark
at a given moment. She succeeded. She married the Earl of Chell. She
also married about twenty thousand acres in England, about a fifth of
Scotland, a house in Piccadilly, seven country seats (including Sneyd),
a steam yacht, and five hundred thousand pounds' worth of shares in the
Midland Railway. She was young and pretty. She had travelled in China
and written a book about China. She sang at charity concerts and acted
in private theatricals. She sketched from nature. She was one of the
great hostesses of London. And she had not the slightest tendency to
stoutness. All this did not satisfy her. She was ambitious! She wanted
to be taken seriously. She wanted to enter into the life of the people.
She saw in the quarter of a million souls that constitute the Five Towns
a unique means to her end, an unrivalled toy. And she determined to be
identified with all that was most serious in the social progress of the
Five Towns. Hence some fifteen thousand pounds were spent in
refurbishing Sneyd Hall, which lies on the edge of the Five Towns, and
the Earl and Countess passed four months of the year there. Hence the
Earl, a mild, retiring man, when invited by the Town Council to be the
ornamental Mayor of Bursley, accepted the invitation. Hence the Mayor
and Mayoress gave an immense afternoon reception to practically the
entire roll of burgesses. And hence, a little later, the Mayoress let it
be known that she meant to give a municipal ball. The news of the ball
thrilled Bursley more than anything had thrilled Bursley since the
signing of Magna Charta. Nevertheless, balls had been offered by
previous mayoresses. One can only suppose that in Bursley there remains
a peculiar respect for land, railway stock, steam yachts, and
great-grandfathers' grandfathers.

Now, everybody of account had been asked to the reception. But everybody
could not be asked to the ball, because not more than two hundred people
could dance in the Town Hall. There were nearly thirty-five thousand
inhabitants in Bursley, of whom quite two thousand "counted," even
though they did not dance.

III

Three weeks and three days before the ball Denry Machin was seated one
Monday alone in Mr Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he
carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and
pretty you