nly thirty, but he had been married seven years and
had two children, both of them the image of all the Barthops that had
ever been, except his own father. In moments of depression he saw
himself through all the coming years being gradually broken, crushed
under a weight of Barthops--father-in-law, wife and children--moulded
into a thin semblance of a Marquis of Ipswich, a bastard Marquis. No one
but himself knew the weakness of his character--explosive, audacious in
alarums or excursions, but without the something, call it strength or
hardness or stupidity, which enables the man or woman possessing it to
resist constant domestic pressure--the unconscious pressure of radically
opposed character. The crowd applauds the marriage of such opposites
because their side almost always wins; partly by its own weight and
partly by their weight behind. But the truth is that two beings opposed
in emotional temperament and mental processes are only a few degrees
more able to help and understand each other in the close union of
marriage than the two personalities of Milly Stewart in the closer union
of her body.

From one point of view it was Goring's fatal weakness to have a real
affection for his father-in-law, who was a pattern of goodness and
good-breeding. Consequently, that very morning he had promised Lord
Ipswich to walk in the straightest way of the party, for one year at
least; and if he must slap faces, to select them on the other side of
the House. Nevertheless, if he really wished to give sincere
gratification to Lord Ipswich and to dear Augusta, he must needs give
up his capricious and offensive tactics altogether. These things might
give him a temporary notoriety in the House and country, but they were
not in the traditions of the Ipswich family, which had held a high place
in politics for two hundred years. The Marquis said that he had always
tried to make George feel that he was received as a true son of the
family and heir of its best traditions, if not of its name. There had
been a great deal of good faith on both sides. Yet now a solitary young
man, looking well in the frock-coat and tall hat of convention, might
have been observed stopping and striking the gravel viciously as he
reflected on the political future which his father-in-law was mapping
out for him.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sir James Carus, the well-known scientist, had for some time been
employing Miss Timson in the capacity of assistant, and spoke h