him--who, he not unfairly
considered, had done so much the best and with the greatest handicaps.
The day when he came over to Cloom and found Lord Luxullyan and
John-James having tea together was too much for his grasp of social
values, and he straightway bought a practice in Plymouth, where he did
very well and rose to be an alderman, though the gleaming eminence of
mayor never was to be for him. He married the daughter of a rich
draper--in "the wholesale"--and as soon as he could afford it he dropped
all doubtful practices and became strictly honest in his profession.

Of all the family, Vassie, who had started out with a more defined
character than the others, was the least changed. She was eminently
successful--had been ever since she met Flynn and determined to marry
him. She had made him a good wife, for he was one of those men who need
feminine encouragement, and with all his brilliance would never have got
so far without her to encourage him. He was not to be one of the great
men of his day, but he had done well, having attained an
Under-Secretaryship under Gladstone's last Administration, which he
continued under Lord Rosebery. With the advent of the Conservative party
in '95 he retired, though still only sixty, and busied himself with a
small estate he had bought in Ireland, where he intended to work out his
schemes for model Utopian tenancies. Vassie was irked by the change. She
had carried into middle life her superabundant energy--her love of being
in the eye of the world. She had no children to occupy her--her only
real quarrel with life--and it did not suit her to sit in Ireland while
her once flaming Dan played with model villages and made notes for his
reminiscences. He had, as flaming dreamers often do, fallen onto the
dreams without the fire, and, having attained a certain amount of his
ideals, was better pleased to sit and look backwards over those which
had not materialised than to face a losing struggle in their cause.

Vassie tried all her wiles to induce him to come to London after the
first year in retirement, and at last she was able to assure him that
she was not feeling well. The symptoms were but slight to begin with--a
tinge of rheumatism in one leg, which annoyed without incapacitating
her. The rheumatism became so fierce that the local doctor at last
decided it must be neuritis, and when the pain became increasingly
acute and frequent he grew alarmed and insisted on a London opinion.
Vas