somebody had to sacrifice themselves. Mama is
unequal to any exertion. You know what papa is----"

"I do, I do," murmured Mr. Quayle, raising his gaze piously to the roof
of the railway carriage.

"If he has one of the boys to tramp over the country with him at
Whitney, and one of the girls to ride with him in London, he is
perfectly happy and content. He is alarmingly improvident. He would
prefer keeping the whole family at home doing nothing----"

"Save laughing at his jokes. My father craves the support of a
sympathetic audience."

"Shotover is worse than useless."

"Except to the guileless Israelite he is. Absolutely true, Louisa."

"Guy would never have gone into the army when he left Eton unless I had
insisted upon it. And it was entirely through the Barkings'
influence--at my representation of course--that Eddie got a berth in
that Liverpool cotton-broker's business. I am sure Alicia is very
comfortably married. I know George Winterbotham is not the least
interesting, but he is perfectly gentlemanlike and presentable, and so
on, and he makes her a most devoted husband. And from what Mr. Barking
heard the other day at the Club from somebody or other, I forget who,
but some one connected with the Government, you know, there is every
probability of George getting that permanent under-secretaryship."

"Did I not start by declaring you had achieved numerous successes?"
Ludovic inquired. "Yet we stray from the point, Louisa. For do I not
still remain ignorant of the root of your sudden interest in my friend
Dickie Calmady? And I thirst to learn how you propose to work him into
the triumphant development of our family fortunes."

The proportions of Lady Louisa's small mouth contracted still further
into an expression of great decision, while she glanced at the
landscape reeling away from the window of the railway carriage. In the
past twelve hours autumn had given place to winter. The bare hedges
showed black, while the fallen leaves of the hedgerow trees formed
unsightly blotches of sodden brown and purple upon the dirty green of
the pastures. Over all brooded an opaque, gray-brown sky, sullen and
impenetrable. Lady Louisa saw all this. But she was one of those
persons happily, for themselves, unaffected by such abstractions as the
aspects of nature. Her purposes were immediate and practical. She
followed them with praiseworthy persistence. The landscape merely
engaged her eyes because she preferred, just now