bout the way ruin stared him in the face and the
need there was for retrenchment, turning over a new leaf, facing facts
and kindred things. Also, which was more important, he wrote to his
wife's banker brother--he who had been instrumental in getting the
papers sent in years ago. To this influential person he said a good
deal about the state of the family finances, the need there was for
clearing matters up and starting on a better basis, and his own
determination to face things fairly and set to work in earnest. What
kind of work was not mentioned; apparently that had nothing to do with
the Captain's resolution; there was one thing, however, that was
mentioned definitely--the need for the banker brother's advice--and
pecuniary assistance. The answer to this letter was received on the
same day as the news of Mr. Harding's engagement. It came in the
evening, later than the news, and it was addressed to Mrs. Polkington,
not the Captain; it assisted her in recognising that the end of the
campaign had arrived. It said several unpleasant things, and it said
them plainly; not the most pleasant to the reader was the announcement
that the writer would himself come to Marbridge to look into matters
one day that week or the next. Under these circumstances it is not
perhaps so surprising that Cherie found it advisable to accept Mr.
Brendon Smith's offer of marriage, and Mrs. Polkington found the
impossibility of getting a trousseau in time no very great
disadvantage.

When Julia came home it wanted but a short time to Cherie's wedding. A
great deal seemed to have happened since she went away, not only to
her family, but, and that was less obviously correct, to herself. She
stood in the drawing-room on the morning after her return and looked
round her and felt that somehow she had travelled a long way from her
old point of view. The room was very untidy; it had not been used, and
so, in accordance with the Polkington custom, not been set tidy for
two days; dust lay thick on everything; there were dead leaves in the
vases, cigarette ash on the table, no coals on the half-laid fire. In
the merciless morning light Julia saw all the deficiencies; the way
things were set best side foremost, though, to her, the worst side
contrived still to show; the display there was everywhere, the
trumpery silver ornaments, all tarnished for want of rubbing, and of
no more intrinsic value and beauty than the tinfoil off champagne
bottles; the cracked