Colonel Hemyock, the temporary tenant of Staplewick Towers, was a somewhat blatant specimen of a retired military man with an unbounded sense of his personal dignity and importance, which sense he derived from an aristocratic wife. Never in this world was there anybody more starchily dignified than the gallant Colonel looked as he sat bolt upright in his phaeton; a tall, thin, thread-paper of a man, with his sharp aquiline nose, and brushed out white whiskers, whiskers of which not a hair was ever seen out of line. But that was all. For the rest he might have been a figure from Madame Tussaud's with a phonograph inside. As behind the horseman is said to be invariably seated Black Care, so behind the gallant driver of that phaeton were sitting the Colonel's two-fold cares, his two daughters. People who affected to know everything--and such are occasionally met with in the country--asserted that it was with a view to getting her daughters off that the scheming Lady Agatha Hemyock had insisted on the family's taking up its abode at the missing Lord Quorn's somewhat derelict place. And the policy had not been entirely without result. But now with the discovery of the new peer the tenancy came to an end. It was simply left for the Hemyocks to close it pleasantly, and, some critics said, designingly, by entertaining the new owner for a few days, introducing him to his property, such as it was, and the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, such as they were, and then leaving him to his own devices, and the result of theirs. "Ah--ah, Popkiss," Colonel Hemyock said in his high, thin voice, acknowledging the bustling innkeeper's salute with a limited flourish of his whip. "I just looked in to say that--ah--Lord Quorn" (he spoke the name with absurd emphasis, shaping his mouth into an O twice as he pronounced it) "is expected to arrive here this afternoon." So impressed was Mr. Popkiss by the stiff and immaculate Colonel's pomposity that all he could ejaculate was, "Dear me, Colonel! Lord Quorn?" "Yes," responded the Colonel freezingly, as he stared straight in front of him over his horses' ears; "his lordship has just arrived from Australia." "I have heard something of it, Colonel," said Mr. Popkiss, regaining his composure; perhaps because his noble visitor suggested by his attitude that he admitted him to no more human fellowship than the mounting block in the yard. "The late peer's cousin, is he not, Colonel? I trust you will not be giving up the Towers?" he added hypocritically, since the Hemyock establishment could hardly be said to bring two-and-sixpence per annum into the coffers of the _Quorn Arms Hotel_. "I--ah, don't know," the buckram personage answered, still staring foolishly over his horses' heads. "Anyhow, his lordship will stay at the Towers for some time as my guest." "Curious; in his own house, Colonel," fatuously remarked Mr. Popkiss, as feeling called to make some comment on the situation.