At any rate, she is not conventional. Why, when I was
set free from my school at Paris, and married Bob three months
later, I hadn't three ideas in my head beyond horses and balls and
soldiers. It has all come with life and reading, my dear."

And a very odd 'all' it was, so far; but there was this difference
between Bessie Duncombe and Cecil Charnock Poynsett, that the
'gospel of progress' was to the one the first she had ever really
known, and became a reaching forward to a newly-perceived standard
of benevolence and nobleness: to the other it was simply
retrograding, and that less from conviction than from the spirit of
rivalry and opposition.

Lady Tyrrell with her father and sister were likewise going to leave
home, to stay among friends with whom Sir Harry could hunt until the
London campaign, when Eleonora was to see the world. Thus the
bazaar was postponed until the return of the ladies in the summer,
when the preparations would be more complete and the season more
suitable. The church must wait for it, for nothing like a
sufficient amount of subscription had been as yet promised.

There was still, however, to come that select dinner-party at Mrs.
Duncombe's, to which Julius, moved by her zeal and honesty, as well
as by curiosity, had promised his presence with Rosamond, "at his
peril," as she said.

They were kept so long at the door of Aucuba Villa that they had
begun to doubt if they had not mistaken the day, until the Sirenwood
carriage crashed up behind them; and after the third pull at the
bell they were admitted by an erect, alert figure,--a remnant of
Captain Duncombe's military life.

He marshalled them into the drawing-room, where by dim firelight
they could just discern the Professor and a certain good-natured
horsey friend of the Captain's, who sprang up from easy-chairs on
the opposite sides of the fire to greet them, while the man hastily
stirred up the fire, lighted the gas, dashed at the table, shutting
up an open blotting-book that lay on it, closing an ink-bottle, and
gathering up some torn fragments or paper, which he would have
thrown into the scrap-basket but that it was full of little books on
the hundred ways of dressing a pumpkin. Then he gave a wistful look
at the ami de la maison, as if commending the guests to him, and
receiving a nod in return, retired.

"I fear we are too early," said Lady Tyrrell.

"Fact is," said the familiar, whose name Julius was trying to
remem