e with those which had accompanied its advent.

For example, Lady Louisa Barking, passing through Lowndes Square one
bleak, March morning on her way from Albert Gate to do a little quiet
shopping in Sloane Street, observed that the Calmadys' house--situated
at the corner of the square and of ---- Street--was given over to a
small army of work-people. During Richard's minority it had been let
for a term of years to Sir Reginald Aldham, of Aldham Revel in
Midlandshire. Since Dickie's coming of age it had stood empty, pending
a migration of the Brockhurst establishment, which migration had, in
point of fact, never yet taken place. But now, as Lady Louisa, walking
with a firm and distinguished tread along the gray, wind-swept
pavements, remarked, the house was in process of redecoration, of
painting within and without. And, looking on these things, Lady
Louisa's soul received very sensible comfort. She was extremely
tenacious of purpose. And, in respect of one purpose at least, heaven
had not seen fit, during the last four or five months, to smile upon
her. Superstitious persons might have regarded this fact as a warning.
Lady Louisa, however, merely regarded it as an oversight. Now at last,
so it appeared to her, heaven had awakened to a consciousness of its
delinquencies, with the satisfactory result that her own commendable
patience touched on reasonable hope of reward. And this was the more
agreeable and comforting to her because the Quayle family affairs were
not, it must be owned, at their brightest and best just at present.
Clouds lowered on the family horizon. For some weeks she had felt the
situation called for effective action on her part. But then, how to act
most effectively she knew not. Now the needed opportunity stared her in
the face, along with those high ladders and scaffolding poles
surrounding the Calmady mansion. She decided, there and then, to take
the field; but to take it discreetly, to effect a turning movement, not
attempt a front attack.

So, on her return to Albert Gate, after the completion of her morning
shopping, she employed the half hour before luncheon in writing an
affectionate, sisterly letter to Ludovic Quayle. That accomplished,
young gentleman happened, as she was aware, to be staying at
Brockhurst. She asked his opinion--in confidence--on the present very
uncomfortable condition of the family fortunes, declaring how
implicitly she trusted his good sense and respected his judgment. Th