indignant that it has been suggested
that the parochial authorities in charge of the "Union," in which he
must inevitably shortly take refuge, may interfere with his rights as
a citizen. The Reverend Lewis has been to talk seriously with him, and
finds him at once irate and obdurate.

"Vicar," says old Benny, "he can't refuse to marry no man. Law won't let
him." Such refusal, he intimates, might drive him to wild and riotous
living. Remembering his last view of old Benny tottering down the
village street in his white smock, his nut-cracker face like a withered
rosy apple, his gnarled hand grasping the knotted staff his bent
body leaned on, Mount Dunstan grinned a little. He did not smile when
Penzance passed to the restoration of the ancient church at Mellowdene.
"Restoration" usually meant the tearing away of ancient oaken,
high-backed pews, and the instalment of smug new benches, suggesting
suburban Dissenting chapels, such as the feudal soul revolts at. Neither
did he smile at a reference to the gathering at Dunholm Castle, which
was twelve miles away. Dunholm was the possession of a man who stood for
all that was first and highest in the land, dignity, learning, exalted
character, generosity, honour. He and the late Lord Mount Dunstan had
been born in the same year, and had succeeded to their titles almost at
the same time. There had arrived a period when they had ceased to know
each other. All that the one man intrinsically was, the other man was
not. All that the one estate, its castle, its village, its tenantry,
represented, was the antipodes of that which the other stood for.
The one possession held its place a silent, and perhaps, unconscious
reproach to the other. Among the guests, forming the large house party
which London social news had already recorded in its columns, were great
and honourable persons, and interesting ones, men and women who counted
as factors in all good and dignified things accomplished. Even in the
present Mount Dunstan's childhood, people of their world had ceased to
cross his father's threshold. As one or two of the most noticeable names
were mentioned, mentally he recalled this, and Penzance, quick to see
the thought in his eyes, changed the subject.

"At Stornham village an unexpected thing has happened," he said. "One of
the relatives of Lady Anstruthers has suddenly appeared--a sister. You
may remember that the poor woman was said to be the daughter of some
rich American, and it