in
a country lane; looks at it; says 'That's good. That would have a fair
chance for the Grand National'--Urquhart buys it for fifty pounds
straight away--and it _does_ win the Grand National. And he knows nothing
special about horses, either. That's what I call genius. It's the same
eye that makes him spot a dusty old bit of good china on a back shelf of
a shop among a crowd of forged rubbish. I've none of that sort of sense;
I'm hopeless. But I like good things, and I can pay for them, and I give
that boy a free rein. He's furnishing my house well for me. It seems to
amuse him rather."

"He loves it," said Felicity. "His love of pleasant things is what he
lives by. Including among them Denis Urquhart, of course."

"Yes." Leslie pursed thoughtful lips over Denis Urquhart. He was perhaps
slightly touched with jealousy there. He was himself rather drawn towards
that tranquil young man, but he knew very well that the drawing was
one-sided; Urquhart was patently undrawn.

"Rather a flash lot, the Urquharts, aren't they?" he said; and Peter, who
liked him, would have had to admit that the remark was perilously near to
a bound. "Seem to have a sort of knack of dazzling people."

"He's an attractive person, of course," Miss Hope replied; and she didn't
say it distantly; she was so sorry for people who bounded, and so many of
her friends did. "It's pleasing to see, isn't it--such whole-souled
devotion?"

Mr. Leslie grunted. "I won't say pearls before swine--because Urquhart
isn't a swine, but a very pleasant, ordinary young fellow. But worship
like that can't be deserved, you know; not by anyone, however
beautifully he motors through life. Margerison's too--well, too nice,
to put it simply--to give himself to another person, body and soul, like
that. It's squandering."

"And irritates you," she reflected, but merely said, "Is squandering
always a bad thing, I wonder?"

It was at this point that Peter and Urquhart came in. Directed by
Felicity to Lucy in an obscure corner, they found her being talked to by
one of the Oddities; he looked rather like an oppressed Finn. He was
talking and she was listening, wide-eyed and ingenuous, her small hands
clasped on her lap. Peter and Urquhart sat down by her, and the oppressed
Finn presently wandered away to talk to Lucy's father.

Lucy gave a little sigh of relief.

"_Wish_ they wouldn't come and talk to me," she said. "I'm no good to
them; I don't understand; and I hate peo