ld leave the announcement to Magdalen.

CHAPTER XXVII

Our chain on silence clanks.
Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs.

--GEORGE MEREDITH.

Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but not
vulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic nature
valued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places in
England. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house with
its wonderful gardens--all these were his.

He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune.
When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recent
rebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement of
his great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained.

A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for the
first time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet his
requirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined,
not an heiress, but by no means penniless.

To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently not
without a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had other
views for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclined
towards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing her
mother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, so
admirable in domestic life, have a tendency of which he had not thought
before to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside into
becoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until they
reach the altar, and like wax afterwards.

When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women had
been ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when he
was making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an English
paper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his great
change of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to return
by a certain date, and continued his tour for another month.

On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visited
occasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation.
Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient,
difficult, _distrait_, slightly pleased with himself at showing so
little gratification at his magnificent inheritance.

On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personal
one