ed to the
drawing-room, and coldly greeted the gentleman of the red neck and
heavy eyelids. Mr. Wrybolt's age was about five and forty; he had the
well-groomed appearance of a flourishing City man, and presented no
sinister physiognomy; one augured in him a disposition to high-feeding
and a masculine self-assertiveness. Faces such as his may be observed
by the thousand round about the Royal Exchange; they almost invariably
suggest degradation, more or less advanced, of a frank and hopeful type
of English visage; one perceives the honest, hearty schoolboy, dimmed
beneath self-indulgence, soul-hardening calculation, debasing
excitement and vulgar routine. Mr. Wrybolt was a widower, without
children; his wife, a strenuous sportswoman, had been killed in riding
to hounds two or three years ago. This afternoon he showed a front all
amiability. He had come, he began by declaring, to let Mrs. Woolstan
know that the son of a common friend of theirs had just, on his advice,
been sent to the same school as Leonard; the boys would be friends, and
make each other feel at home. This news Mrs. Woolstan received with
some modification of her aloofness; she was very glad; after all,
perhaps it had been a wise thing to send Leonard off with little
warning; she would only have made herself miserable in the anticipation
of parting with him. That, said Mr. Wrybolt, was exactly what he had
himself felt. He was quite sure that in a few days Mrs. Woolstan would
see that all was for the best. The fact of the matter was that Len's
tutor, though no doubt a very competent man, had been guilty of
indiscretion in unsettling the boy's ideas on certain very important
subjects. Well, admitted the mother, perhaps it was so; she would say
no more; Mr. Wrybolt, as a man of the world, probably knew best. And
now--as he was here, she would use the opportunity to speak to him on a
subject which had often been in her mind of late. It was a matter of
business. As her trustee was aware, she possessed a certain little
capital which was entirely at her own disposal. More than once Mr.
Wrybolt had spoken to her about it--had been so kind as to express a
hope that she managed that part of her affairs wisely, and to offer his
services if ever she desired to make any change in her investments. The
truth was, that she had thought recently of trying to put out her money
to better advantage, and she would like to talk the matter over with
him. This they proceeded to do,