which he felt like one
travelling through a desert, longing to meet a fellow-creature.

The voice of Harbinger behind them said:

"Lady-Babs!"

Long did the punkahs waft their breeze over that brave-hued wheel of
pleasure, and the sound of the violins quaver and wail out into the
morning. Then quickly, as the spangles of dew vanish off grass when the
sun rises, all melted away; and in the great rooms were none but flunkeys
presiding over the polished surfaces like flamingoes by some lakeside at
dawn.

CHAPTER III

A brick dower-house of the Fitz-Harolds, just outside the little
seaside town of Nettlefold, sheltered the tranquil days of Lord
Dennis. In that south-coast air, sanest and most healing in all
England, he raged very slowly, taking little thought of death, and
much quiet pleasure in his life. Like the tall old house with its
high windows and squat chimneys, he was marvellously self-contained.
His books, for he somewhat passionately examined old civilizations,
and described their habits from time to time with a dry and not too
poignant pen in a certain old-fashioned magazine; his microscope, for
he studied infusoria; and the fishing boat of his friend John Bogle,
who had long perceived that Lord Dennis was the biggest fish he ever
caught; all these, with occasional visitors, and little runs to
London, to Monkland, and other country houses, made up the sum of a
life which, if not desperately beneficial, was uniformly kind and
harmless, and, by its notorious simplicity, had a certain negative
influence not only on his own class but on the relations of that
class with the country at large. It was commonly said in Nettlefold,
that he was a gentleman; if they were all like him there wasn't much
in all this talk against the Lords. The shop people and lodging-house
keepers felt that the interests of the country were safer in
his hands: than in the hands of people who wanted to meddle with
everything for the good of those who were only anxious to be let
alone. A man too who could so completely forget he was the son of a
Duke, that other people never forgot it, was the man for their money.
It was true that he had never had a say in public affairs; but this
was overlooked, because he could have had it if he liked, and the
fact that he did not like, only showed once more that he was a
gentleman.

Just as he was the one personality of the little town against whom
practically nothing was ever, said, so