a specialist; it's
almost certain to mean a breakdown. You're up about dresses, I see.
When do you come to town? The season's getting on."

Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though
punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly a
man to inspire awe in his social equals. It was, therefore, not through
fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an instinct for
avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her, and because the
truth was really untellable. Even to herself it seemed slightly
ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take it so dreadfully to
heart.

"I don't know about coming up this season. The garden is looking so
beautiful, and there's Bee's engagement. The dear child is so happy!"

The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.

"Ah yes," he said--"young Tharp! Let's see, he's not the eldest. His
brother's in my old corps. What does this young fellow do with himself?"

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

"He's only farming. I'm afraid he'll have nothing to speak of, but he's
a dear good boy. It'll be a long engagement. Of course, there's nothing
in farming, and Horace insists on their having a thousand a year. It
depends so much on Mr. Tharp. I think they could do perfectly well on
seven hundred to start with, don't you, Charles?"

General Pendyce's answer was not more conspicuously to the point than
usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of thought.

"What about George?", he said. "I met him in the hall as I was coming
in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry. They told me at Epsom
that he was hard hit."

His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike, failed to
observe his sister-in-law's face.

"Hard hit?" she repeated.

"Lost a lot of money. That won't do, you know, Margery--that won't do.
A little mild gambling's one thing."

Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid: It was the face of a woman
on the point of saying: "Do not compel me to hint that you are boring
me!"

The General went on:

"A lot of new men have taken to racing that no one knows anything about.
That fellow who bought George's horse, for instance; you'd never have
seen his nose in Tattersalls when I was a young man. I find when I go
racing I don't know half the colours. It spoils the pleasure. It's no
longer the close borough that it was. George had better take care what
he's about. I c