lare that he should for ever devote himself; Mrs. Ogram
(she had been for a year or two a professional model) objected to that
ungentlemanly pursuit with much more vigour and efficacy than the young
man's parents, who had merely regretted that Quentin should waste his
time and associate with a class of persons not regarded as worthy of
much respect. Whether the dismissed cronies would talk or keep silence,
who could say? Sir Spencer affected to believe that Arabella, when his
son came to know her, was leading the life of a harmless, necessary
sempstress, and that only by long entreaty, and under every condition
of decorum, had she been induced to sit for her bust to the
enthusiastic sculptor. Very touching was the story of how, when the
artist became adorer and offered marriage, dear Arabella would not hear
of such a thing; how, when her heart began to soften, she one day burst
into tears and implored Mr. Ogram to prove his love, not by wildly
impossible sacrifice, but simply by sending her to school, so that she
might make herself less unworthy to think of him with pathetic
devotion, and from a great distance, to the end of her days. To school,
in very deed, she had been sent; that is to say, she had all manner of
teachers, first in England and then abroad, during the couple of years
before the birth of her child; and by this instruction Arabella
profited so notably that her language made no glaring contrast with
that of the civilised world, and her mind seemed if anything more
acute, more circumspective, than women's generally in the sphere to
which she was now admitted. Sir Spencer and Lady Ogram did not love
her; they made no pretence of doing so; and it may be feared that the
lives of both were shortened by chagrin and humiliation. At the age of
thirty or so, Quentin succeeded to the baronetcy. In the same year his
son died. No other offspring had blessed, or was to bless, the romantic
union.

Behold Arabella, erst of Camden Town, installed as mistress of a house
in Mayfair and reigning over Rivenoak. Inevitably, legends were rife
about her; where the exact truth was not known, people believed worse.
Her circle of society was but a narrow one; but for two classes of
well-dressed people, the unscrupulous snobs and the cheerily
indifferent, her drawing-room would have been painfully bare. Some
families knew her because Sir Quentin was one of the richest men in his
county; certain persons accepted her invitations beca