.

Mr. Pendyce turned him over with his foot.

"Get up, John! Be good enough to take John out, Margery."

Mrs. Pendyce flushed, but did not move.

"John," said Mr. Pendyce, "go with your mistress." The spaniel John
fluttered a drooping tail. Mr. Pendyce pressed his foot to it.

"This is not a subject for women."

Mrs. Pendyce bent down.

"Come, John," she said. The spaniel John, showing the whites of his
eyes, and trying to back through his collar, was assisted from the room.
Mr. Pendyce closed the door behind them.

"Have a glass of port, Vigil; it's the '47. My father laid it down in
'56, the year before he died. Can't drink it myself--I've had to put
down two hogsheads of the Jubilee wine. Paramor, fill your glass. Take
that chair next to Paramor, Vigil. You know Barter?"

Both Gregory's face and the Rector's were very red.

"We're all Harrow men here," went on Mr. Pendyce. And suddenly turning
to Mr. Paramor, he said: "Well?"

Just as round the hereditary principle are grouped the State, the Church,
Law, and Philanthropy, so round the dining-table at Worsted Skeynes sat
the Squire, the Rector, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil, and none of them
wished to be the first to speak. At last Mr. Paramor, taking from his
pocket Bellew's note and George's answer, which were pinned in strange
alliance, returned them to the Squire.

"I understand the position to be that George refuses to give her up; at
the same time he is prepared to defend the suit and deny everything.
Those are his instructions to me." Taking up the vase again, he sniffed
long and deep at the rose.

Mr. Pendyce broke the silence.

"As a gentleman," he said in a voice sharpened by the bitterness of his
feelings, "I suppose he's obliged----"

Gregory, smiling painfully, added:

"To tell lies."

Mr. Pendyce turned on him at once.

"I've nothing to say about that, Vigil. George has behaved abominably.
I don't uphold him; but if the woman wishes the suit defended he can't
play the cur--that's what I was brought up to believe."

Gregory leaned his forehead on his hand.

"The whole system is odious----" he was beginning.

Mr. Paramor chimed in.

"Let us keep to the facts; without the system."

The Rector spoke for the first time.

"I don't know what you mean about the system; both this man and this
woman are guilty----"

Gregory said in a voice that quivered with rage:

"Be so kind as not to use the expression, 'this wom