imes to come. But,
since he was not a philosopher, he did not perceive the inconsistency
between his theory and his dismay. He saw his universe reeling before
that note, and he was not a man to suffer tamely; he felt that others
ought to suffer too. It was monstrous that a fellow like this Bellew, a
loose fish, a drunkard, a man who had nearly run over him, should have
it in his power to trouble the serenity of Worsted Skeynes. It was like
his impudence to bring such a charge against his son. It was like
his d----d impudence! And going abruptly to the bell, he trod on his
spaniel's ear.

"D---n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!" But the spaniel John, convinced
at last that he had sinned, hid himself in a far corner whence he could
see nothing, and pressed his chin closely to the ground.

"Ask your mistress to come here."

Standing by the hearth, waiting for his wife, the Squire displayed to
greater advantage than ever the shape of his long and narrow head; his
neck had grown conspicuously redder; his eyes, like those of an offended
swan, stabbed, as it were, at everything they saw.

It was not seldom that Mrs. Pendyce was summoned to the study to
hear him say: "I want to ask your advice. So-and-so has done such and
such.... I have made up my mind."

She came, therefore, in a few minutes. In compliance with his "Look at
that, Margery," she read the note, and gazed at him with distress in her
eyes, and he looked back at her with wrath in his. For this was tragedy.

Not to everyone is it given to take a wide view of things--to look over
the far, pale streams, the purple heather, and moonlit pools of the
wild marches, where reeds stand black against the sundown, and from long
distance comes the cry of a curlew--nor to everyone to gaze from steep
cliffs over the wine-dark, shadowy sea--or from high mountainsides to
see crowned chaos, smoking with mist, or gold-bright in the sun.

To most it is given to watch assiduously a row of houses, a back-yard,
or, like Mrs. and Mr. Pendyce, the green fields, trim coverts, and
Scotch garden of Worsted Skeynes. And on that horizon the citation of
their eldest son to appear in the Divorce Court loomed like a cloud,
heavy with destruction.

So far as such an event could be realised imagination at Worsted Skeynes
was not too vivid--it spelled ruin to an harmonious edifice of ideas and
prejudice and aspiration. It would be no use to say of that event, "What
does it matter? Let people