married again?"

I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had
married John's father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a
handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could
not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic,
autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social
notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady
Bountiful. She was a most generous woman, and possessed a considerable
fortune of her own.

Their country-place, Styles Court, had been purchased by Mr. Cavendish
early in their married life. He had been completely under his wife's
ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her
lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income; an arrangement that
was distinctly unfair to his two sons. Their step-mother, however, had
always been most generous to them; indeed, they were so young at the
time of their father's remarriage that they always thought of her as
their own mother.

Lawrence, the younger, had been a delicate youth. He had qualified as a
doctor but early relinquished the profession of medicine, and lived at
home while pursuing literary ambitions; though his verses never had any
marked success.

John practiced for some time as a barrister, but had finally settled
down to the more congenial life of a country squire. He had married
two years ago, and had taken his wife to live at Styles, though I
entertained a shrewd suspicion that he would have preferred his mother
to increase his allowance, which would have enabled him to have a home
of his own. Mrs. Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her
own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this
case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings.

John noticed my surprise at the news of his mother's remarriage and
smiled rather ruefully.

"Rotten little bounder too!" he said savagely. "I can tell you,
Hastings, it's making life jolly difficult for us. As for Evie--you
remember Evie?"

"No."

"Oh, I suppose she was after your time. She's the mater's factotum,
companion, Jack of all trades! A great sport--old Evie! Not precisely
young and beautiful, but as game as they make them."

"You were going to say----?"

"Oh, this fellow! He turned up from nowhere, on the pretext of being
a second cousin or something of Evie's, though she didn't seem
particularly keen to ackn