in this way, under
the impression that he was saving a situation.

"You'll be bored to death--I give you six months," were Miss Batchelor's
parting words, murmured aside over her shoulder.

On their way home Stanistreet congratulated Tyson.

"By Jove! you've fallen on your feet, Tyson. They tell me Miss Batchelor
is interested in you."

"I am not interested in Miss Batchelor. Who is she?"

"She is only Miss Batchelor of Meriden Court--the richest land-owner in
Leicestershire."

"Good heavens! Why doesn't somebody marry her?"

"Miss Batchelor, they say, is much too clever for that."

"Is she?" And Tyson laughed, a little brutally.

* * * * *

Of course everybody called on the eccentric newcomer when they saw that
the Morleys had taken him up. But before they had time to ask each other
to meet him, Mr. Nevill Tyson had imported his own society from Putney or
Bohemia, or some of those places.

That was his first mistake.

The next was his marriage. In fact, for a man in Tyson's insecure
position, it was more than a mistake; it was madness. He ought to have
married some powerful woman like Miss Batchelor, a woman with ideas and
money and character, to say nothing of an inviolable social reputation.
But men like Tyson never do what they ought. Miss Batchelor was clever,
and he hated clever women. So he married Molly Wilcox. Molly Wilcox was
nineteen; she had had no education, and, what was infinitely worse, she
had a vulgar mother. And as Mr. Wilcox might be considered a negligible
quantity, the chances were that she would take after her mother.

The mystery was how Tyson ever came to know these people. Mr. Wilcox was
a student and an invalid; moreover, he was excessively morose. He would
not have called, and even Mrs. Wilcox could hardly have called without
him. Scandal-mongers said that Tyson struck up an acquaintance with the
girl and her mother in a railway carriage somewhere between Drayton and
St. Pancras, and had called on the strength of it. It did great credit to
his imagination that he could see the makings of Mrs. Nevill Tyson in
Molly Wilcox, dressed according to her mother's taste, with that hair of
hers all curling into her eyes in front, and rumpled up anyhow behind.
However, though I daresay his introduction was a little informal and
obscure, there was every reason for the intimacy that followed. The
Wilcoxes were unpopular; so, by this time, was Tyson. In cultiv