has some influence with
Miltoun."

Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his wife's
arm, went out.

Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who did
not go to meet disturbance. He had the nerves which seem to be no nerves
at all--especially found in those of his class who have much to do with
horses. He temperamentally regarded the evil of the day as quite
sufficient to it. Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle that he had long
given up, so far as women were concerned.

Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that he
had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.

"Lady Barbara down yet?" Hearing that she was not, he slipped into the
motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the white
portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.

The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the smothered
whirring of the car.

"Come on, Grandpapa!"

Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa
always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by no
means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:

"Send down to the lodge gate for this."

The voice of little Ann answered loudly:

"No; I'm coming back by myself."

The car starting, drowned discussion.

Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the invasion of
institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of the turf, and
not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul (outside politics)
was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled by common sense, not
only to tolerate, but to take up and even press forward the cause of
their supplanters. His instinct of self-preservation was secretly at
work, hurrying him to his own destruction; forcing him to persuade
himself that science and her successive victories over brute nature could
be wooed into the service of a prestige which rested on a crystallized
and stationary base. All this keeping pace with the times, this
immersion in the results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up of
existence so that it was all surface and little root--the increasing
volatility, cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on which
he rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a secrecy too
deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically demanded of
one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle, though b