arity of the case,
that, though there was in it neither murder, robbery, illness, accident,
fire, or any other of the tragic and legitimate shakers of human nerves,
two of the three who were gathered there sat through the meal without the
least consciousness of what viands had composed it. Impressiveness
depends as much upon propinquity as upon magnitude; and to have honoured
unawares the daughter of the vilest Antipodean miscreant and murderer
would have been less discomfiting to Mrs. Doncastle than it was to make
the same blunder with the daughter of a respectable servant who happened
to live in her own house. To Neigh the announcement was as the
catastrophe of a story already begun, rather than as an isolated wonder.
Ethelberta's words had prepared him for something, though the nature of
that thing was unknown.

'Chickerel ought not to have kept us in ignorance of this--of course he
ought not!' said Mrs. Doncastle, as soon as they were left alone.

'I don't see why not,' replied Mr. Doncastle, who took the matter very
coolly, as was his custom.

'Then she herself should have let it be known.'

'Nor does that follow. You didn't tell Mrs. Petherwin that your
grandfather narrowly escaped hanging for shooting his rival in a duel.'

'Of course not. There was no reason why I should give extraneous
information.'

'Nor was there any reason why she should. As for Chickerel, he doubtless
felt how unbecoming it would be to make personal remarks upon one of your
guests--Ha-ha-ha! Well, well--Ha-ha-ha-ha!'

'I know this,' said Mrs. Doncastle, in great anger, 'that if my father
had been in the room, I should not have let the fact pass unnoticed, and
treated him like a stranger!'

'Would you have had her introduce Chickerel to us all round? My dear
Margaret, it was a complicated position for a woman.'

'Then she ought not to have come!'

'There may be something in that, though she was dining out at other
houses as good as ours. Well, I should have done just as she did, for
the joke of the thing. Ha-ha-ha!--it is very good--very. It was a case
in which the appetite for a jest would overpower the sting of conscience
in any well-constituted being--that, my dear, I must maintain.'

'I say she should not have come!' answered Mrs. Doncastle firmly. 'Of
course I shall dismiss Chickerel.'

'Of course you will do no such thing. I have never had a butler in the
house before who suited me so well. It is a great cred