Nelson Smith would be master and mistress of the house in Portman Square.
If there were ever a clash between wills, Nelson Smith's would prevail
over theirs.

How this impression was conveyed to their intelligence they could hardly
have explained even to each other. The man was so pleasant, so careless
of finances or conventionalities, that not one word or look could be
treasured up against him.

"The fellow's a genius!" Annesley-Seton said to Constance, when they were
talking over the latest phase of the game. And they respected him.

Lady Annesley-Seton wished to bring to town the servants, including a
wonderful butler, who had been transferred for economy's sake to Valley
House. This proposal, however, Nelson Smith dismissed with a few
good-natured words. He had his eye upon a butler whose brother was
a chauffeur.

"Besides, it wouldn't be fair to Anita," he explained. "Your servants
would scorn to take orders from her, and I want her to learn the dignity
of a married woman with responsibilities of her own. That's the first
step toward being the perfect hostess. She's the sweetest girl in the
world, but she's timid and distrustful of herself. I want her to know her
own worth, and then it won't be long before everyone around her knows
it."

There was no answer to this except acquiescence, which Dick and Constance
were obliged to give. They did give it: the more readily because they
were inclined to suspect a hidden hint, a pill between layers of jam.

If the girl had been transferred from the earth to Mars, the new
conditions of life could scarcely have been more different from the old
than was life in Portman Square married to Nelson Smith, from the
treadmill as Mrs. Ellsworth's slave-companion. What the Portman Square
experiences of the bride would have been if Knight had allowed the
Annesley-Setons to begin by ruling it would be dangerous to say. But he
had taken his stand; and without guessing that she owed her freedom of
action to her husband's strength of will, she revelled in it with a joy
so intense that it came close to pain. Sometimes, if he were within
reach, she ran to find Knight, and hugged him almost fiercely, with a
passion that surprised herself.

"I'm so happy; that's all," she would explain, if he asked "What has
happened?" "My soul was buried. You've brought it back to life."

When she said such things Knight smiled, and seemed glad. He would hold
her to him for a minute, or kiss her hand,