s story to present three exemplars of the domestic virtues,
telling how they went away to the seaside together, and returned
together to their castle among tall trees in October compelling the
admiration of the entire countryside. He would have shown us the
Marchioness entertaining visitors while the two men talked by the
fireplace, delighting in each other's company, and he would not have
forgotten to put them before us in their afternoon walks, sharing
between them Violet's knick-knacks, her wraps, her scarf, her fan, her
parasol, her cushion. His last chapter would probably be in a ball-room,
husband and lover standing by the door watching the Marchioness swinging
round the room on the arm of a young subaltern. 'Other women are younger
than she, Kilcarney, but who is as graceful? Have you ever seen a woman
hold herself like Violet?' One of the daughters (for there have been
children by this second, or shall we say by this third, marriage) comes
up breathless after the dance. 'Darling Uncle Hughie, won't you take me
for an ice?' and he gives her his arm affectionately, but as they pass
away to the buffet Sir Hugh hears Kilcarney speaking of Lily as his
daughter. Sir Hugh's face clouds suddenly, but he remembers that, after
all, Kilcarney is a guardian of his wife's honour. A very ingenious
story, no doubt, and if, as the young man's ascendant--the critics of
1915 are pleased to speak of me as ascendant from the author of
_Muslin_--I may be permitted to remark upon it, I would urge the very
grave improbability that three people ever lived contemporaneously who
were wise enough to prefer, and so consistently, happiness to the
conventions.

There are still May Gould and Olive to consider, but this preface has
been prolonged unduly, and it may be well to leave the reader to imagine
a future for these girls, and to decide the interests that will fill
Mrs. Barton's life when Lord Dungory's relations with this world have
ceased.

G.M.

MUSLIN

I

The convent was situated on a hilltop, and through the green garden the
white dresses of the schoolgirls fluttered like the snowy plumage of a
hundred doves. Obeying a sudden impulse, a flock of little ones would
race through a deluge of leaf-entangled rays towards a pet companion
standing at the end of a gravel-walk examining the flower she has just
picked, the sunlight glancing along her little white legs proudly and
charmingly advanced. The elder girls in the