est people of her own sex
looked with instinctive disapproval! A woman in her position should
avoid anything conspicuous, and Nature had given her a too-striking
appearance. People said that when, the year before last, she had
separated from Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply because
they were tired of one another. They said, too, that it looked as if she
were encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's eldest son.

Lady Maiden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room before
dinner:

"What is it about that Mrs. Bellew? I never liked her. A woman situated
as she is ought to be more careful. I don't understand her being asked
here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only just over the way.
Besides, she's very hard up. She doesn't even attempt to disguise it. I
call her almost an adventuress."

Mrs. Winlow had answered:

"But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce. The Pendyces are related
to everybody! It's so boring. One never knows---"

Lady Maiden replied:

"Did you know her when she was living down here? I dislike those
hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One
heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped it;
and she bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in love with her,
I'm very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much of her in town.
She's one of those women that men are always hanging about!"

At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed a
menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.

"This soup," he said to Mrs. Bellew, "reminds me of your dear old father;
he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect for your
father--a wonderful man! I always said he was the most determined man
I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most obstinate man in
the three kingdoms!"

He frequently made use of the expression "in the three kingdoms," which
sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was descended from
Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the Cornish giants,
one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile, had once thrown a cow
over a wall.

"Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a
lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate,
and I find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have
everything they want, but it's im