of her spoilt child. He had made an open bid for
popularity and failed, and it was positively painful to see him writhing
under the consciousness of his failure.

And the cause of it all was Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Yet he was proud of her
still; proud even of the notoriety which was a tribute to her beauty. To
tell the truth, her notoriety was his protection. Once the elections were
over, gossip was too busy with the wife to pay much attention to the
husband. He was considered to have extinguished himself for good. Miss
Batchelor no longer regretted that he had no profession. To be the
husband of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire was profession enough
for any man.

By a further social paradox, Mrs. Nevill Tyson owed much of her present
notoriety to her former obscurity. Lady Morley, had her temperament
permitted, might have been as frisky or as risky as she pleased, without
attracting unkind attention, much less censure. But, unless she combined
the virtue of an angel with the manners of a district visitor, and
contrived to walk circumspectly across the quicksands that separated her
from "good society," a daughter of Mrs. Wilcox was condemned already.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never walked circumspectly in her life. And Fate,
that follows on the footsteps of the fool, was waiting, if not to catch
Mrs. Nevill Tyson tripping, at any rate to prove that she must trip.

At first Fate merely willed that Sir Peter should take a journey up to
town. Sir Peter's serviceable tweed suit, that had lasted him a good five
years, was beginning to go at the corners. We know Stanistreet's opinion
of Sir Peter's taste in dress; it was only a coarser expression of the
views held by his wife. But for her frank and friendly criticism, Sir
Peter, holding change in abhorrence, would have worn that tweed suit
another five years at the very least.

"It's a capital suit," said he.

"Perfectly disgraceful," said she. "Look at your elbow."

"Ordinary wear and tear."

"Particularly tear." And while she was speaking Sir Peter had rubbed the
worn place into a jagged hole. Sir Peter sighed. He was much attached to
that tweed suit; it knew his ways, and had adapted itself to all the
little eccentricities of his figure. After five years there is a certain
intimacy between a man and his suit. However, there was no blinking the
fact--the suit was doomed. Sir Peter's man seized the occasion for a
general overhauling of his master's wardrobe, with the res