st
impossible to imagine a state of things in which it did not so. The
great house was admirably ordered; there was no sound that there should
not be--no hitches, no gaps or cracks anywhere; it moved like a
well-oiled machine; the gong, sounded in the great hall, issued
invitations rather than commands. All was leisurely, perfectly adapted
and irreproachable.

* * * * *

It is always more difficult for people who live in such houses as these
to behave well under adverse fortune than for those who live in houses
where the Irish stew can be smelled at eleven o'clock in the morning,
and where the doors do not shut properly, and the kitchen range goes
wrong. Possibly something of this fact helped to explain the owner's
extreme violence of temper on the occasion of his son's revolt. It was
intolerable for a man all of whose other surroundings moved like
clockwork, obedient to his whims, to be disobeyed flatly by one whose
obedience should be his first duty--to find disorder and rebellion in
the very mainspring of the whole machine.

Possibly, too, the little scheme that was maturing in Lord Talgarth's
mind between tea and dinner that evening helped to restore his
geniality; for, as soon as the thought was conceived, it became obvious
that it could be carried through with success.

He observed: "Aha! it's time, is it?" to his man in a hearty kind of
way, and hoisted himself out of his chair with unusual briskness.

(III)

He spent a long evening again in the library alone. Archie was away; and
after dining alone with all the usual state, the old man commanded that
coffee should be brought after him. The butler found him, five minutes
later, kneeling before a tall case of drawers, trying various keys off
his bunch, and when the man came to bring in whisky and clear away the
coffee things he was in his deep chair, a table on either side of him
piled with papers, and a drawer upon his knees.

"You can put this lot back," he remarked to the young footman,
indicating a little pile of four drawers on the hearth-rug. He watched
the man meditatively as he attempted to fit them into their places.

"Not that way, you fool! Haven't you got eyes?... The top one at the
top!"

But he said it without bitterness--almost contemplatively. And, as the
butler glanced round a moment or two later to see that all was in order,
he saw his master once more beginning to read papers.

"Good-night," said Lor