SO tall that he looked over most men’s heads, so strong that his movements must be for ever circumscribed and timid, Dudley Leicester had never in his life done anything--he had not even been in the Guards. Least of all did he ever realize personal attitudes in those around him. The minute jealousies, the very deep hatreds, and the strong passions that swelled in his particular world of deep idleness, of high feeling, and of want of occupation--in this world where, since no man had any need of anything to do, there were so many things to feel--Dudley Leicester perceived absolutely nothing, no complexities, no mixed relationships. To him a man was a man, a woman a woman; the leader in a newspaper was a series of convincing facts, of satisfying views, and of final ideals. Belonging as he did to the governing classes, Dudley Leicester had not even the one outlet for passion that is open to these highly groomed and stall-fed creatures. The tradition of the public service was in his blood. He owned a slice of his kingdom that was more than microscopic on the map. But though he had come into his great possessions at the age of twenty-seven, he made no effort whatever to put things straight, since he had more than enough to satisfy his simple needs,--to provide him with a glass bath and silver taps, to pay his subscription at his club, to give him his three cigars a day, his box at a music-hall once a week, his month on the Riviera--and to leave him a thousand or two over every year, which was the fact most worrying to his existence. It was Robert Grimshaw who set his estates in order; who found him a young, hard steward with modern methods; who saw to it that he built additions to several Church schools, and who directed the steward to cut down the rent on overburdened farms, to raise other rents, to provide allotments, to plant heavy land with trees, and to let the shootings to real advantage. It was, indeed, Robert Grimshaw who raised Dudley Leicester’s income to figures that in other circumstances Leicester would have found intolerable. But, on the other hand, it was Robert Grimshaw who put all the surplus back into the estates, who had all the gates rehung, all the hedges replanted, all the roofs of the barns ripped and retiled, and all the cottages rebuilt. And it was Robert Grimshaw who provided him with his Pauline.