ron
felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to
the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness
in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in
the dining room. She had purposed a like banishment for Lady Agatha;
but here Charlie had interceded, and the unhappy beauty hung still
behind his mother's chair and opposite his own. It was just to remember
that but for poor Agatha's fault and fate the present branch might
never have enjoyed the honors at all; so Charlie urged to Lady
Merceron, catching at any excuse for keeping Lady Agatha. Lady
Merceron's way of judging pictures may seem peculiar, but the fact is
that she lacked what is called the sense of historical perspective: she
did not see why our ancestors should be treated so tenderly and
allowed, with a charitable reference to the change in manners,
forgiveness for what no one to-day could hope to win a pardon. Mr.
Vansittart Merceron smiled at his sister-in-law and shrugged his
shoulders; but in vain. To the smoking-room went the wicked Lord
Warmley, and Lady Agatha was remarkably lucky in that she did not
follow him.

Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years
younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white
face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted
momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really
had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the
effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his
marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied
much, on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy
about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they
should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact
only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the
world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the
Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement
and satisfactory settlement of Charlie's future.

Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past.
"Yon wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you're
wasting your time now," he remarked, when Charlie and he were left
alone after dinner.

Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha's picture. "With a sigh he turned to
his uncle.

"That's all ver