on and heir.

And that other baby, Mrs. Nevill Tyson, so violently weaned from the joy
of motherhood, she too grew pale and thin; she too was indifferent to
things around her, and she took very little notice of her son.

By a strange and unfortunate coincidence Captain Stanistreet had not been
seen in Drayton for the space of five months; and coupling this fact with
Mrs. Nevill Tyson's altered looks, the logical mind of Drayton Parva drew
its own conclusions.

CHAPTER VII

SIR PETER'S NEW CLOTHES

Tyson had not married in order to improve his social position; he had
married because he was in love as he had never been in love before. He
would have married a barmaid, if necessary, for the same reason. He was
not long in finding out that he owed his unpopularity in a great measure
to his marriage. To the curious observer this consciousness of his
mistake was conspicuous in his manner. (It was to be hoped that his wife
was not a curious observer.) And Sir Peter made matters no better by
going about declaring that Mrs. Nevill Tyson was the loveliest woman in
Leicestershire, when everybody knew that his wife had flatly refused to
call on her. By this time Tyson was quite aware that his standing in the
county had depended all along on the support which the Morleys were
pleased to give him. They had taken him up in the beginning, and his
position had seemed secure. If at that ripe moment he had chosen to
strengthen it by a marriage with Lady Morley's dearest friend, he might
have been anything he pleased. Miss Batchelor of Meriden would have
proved a still more powerful ally than Sir Peter. She would have been as
ambitious for him as he could have been for himself. By joining the
estates of Thorneytoft and Meriden, Nevill Tyson, Esquire, would have
become one of the largest land-owners in Leicestershire, when in all
probability he would have known the joy of representing his county in
Parliament. He was born for life on a large scale, a life of excitement
and action; and there were times when a political career presented itself
to his maturer fancy as the end and crown of existence. All this might
have been open to him if he had chosen; if, for instance, this clever
man had not cherished a rooted objection to the society of clever women.
As it was, his marriage had made him the best-abused man in those parts.

Since Tyson was not to mold his country's destinies in Parliament, he
turned his attention to local polit