with his wife; but to them had no children been born, luckily,
as he was a poor man. Alas, to a beautiful son it is not often that
beauty can be a fortune as to a daughter. Young Reginald Dosett,--he
is anything now but young,--had done but little for himself with his
beauty, having simply married the estimable daughter of a brother
clerk. Now, at the age of fifty, he had his L900 a year from his
office, and might have lived in fair comfort had he not allowed a
small millstone of debt to hang round his neck from his earlier
years. But still he lived creditably in a small but very genteel
house at Notting Hill, and would have undergone any want rather than
have declared himself to be a poor man to his rich relations the
Tringles.

Such were now the remaining two children of old Mr. Dosett,--Lady
Tringle, namely, and Reginald Dosett, the clerk in the Admiralty.
Adelaide, the beauty in chief of the family, was gone; and now
also her husband, the improvident artist, had followed his wife.
Dormer had been by no means a failing artist. He had achieved
great honour,--had at an early age been accepted into the Royal
Academy,--had sold pictures to illustrious princes and more
illustrious dealers, had been engraved and had lived to see his own
works resold at five times their original prices. Egbert Dormer might
also have been a rich man. But he had a taste for other beautiful
things besides a wife. The sweetest little phaeton that was to
cost nothing, the most perfect bijou of a little house at South
Kensington,--he had boasted that it might have been packed without
trouble in his brother-in-law Tringle's dining-room,--the simplest
little gem for his wife, just a blue set of china for his dinner
table, just a painted cornice for his studio, just satin hangings for
his drawing-room,--and a few simple ornaments for his little girls;
these with a few rings for himself, and velvet suits of clothing
in which to do his painting; these, with a few little dinner
parties to show off his blue china, were the first and last of his
extravagances. But when he went, and when his pretty things were
sold, there was not enough to cover his debts. There was, however, a
sweet savour about his name. When he died it was said of him that his
wife's death had killed him. He had dropped his pallette, refused
to finish the ordered portrait of a princess, and had simply turned
himself round and died.

Then there were the two daughters, Lucy and Ayala