It is a little absurd, isn't it, that a man who never does anything should get the lion's share, and the real workers come off second best?" "It is a question of capital, I suppose," said the friend to whom she was telling this story of the family fortunes. "Oh, to be sure! he has the capital which the old gentleman worked for, so now he doesn't require to do much, and everybody toils for him. But I don't think he will ever marry--all his habits are against it. And he says why should he, when we have been so kind as to provide an heir for him as well as a home? He refers to little Charles, of course. You may imagine I don't build much on what a young man like that says; but I really don't, myself, believe he will ever marry. He is too happy with us here." "He is very young to come to such a decision," was the remark of the listener, whose private opinion was that Mrs Leicester Wargrave was far too self-important, and ought to be taken down. "Oh, yes, not much over thirty. Of course it's ridiculous: but I have my own ways of knowing, and you'll see it'll come true." Whether Mrs Leicester Wargrave believed that a hopeless platonic attachment for herself lay at the bottom of Mr Charles Wargrave's determined celibacy it would be difficult to say. She was certainly very proud of his devotion to her, of the dutiful way he appeared at all her parties, and the familiar manner in which he haunted her house. It was a very pleasant house, unlike other London houses, in the depths of the quaint little square of which it formed one side--with its great wide staircase showing a sublime disregard of space, its stuccoed roofs and walls, fine garlands of delicate white against a pale green not quite so faded as the last novelty of asceticism, though a hundred and fifty years old, and its windows opening upon a genuine garden--a garden in which you could lose yourself, in which there were shady walks and great trees, in which it was impossible to believe that at the other side of the house omnibuses were standing, and that a hansom could be called to the door by a whistle almost at any hour of the night or day. This gave it a quaint and paradoxical character, adding a charm to the large pleasant rooms, which were not shrouded in curtains and blinds as London houses usually are, but saw clear sky out of every window--clear sky and waving trees. And Mrs Leicester Wargrave had a choice of very good society, mixed and more original than is usual. She had a number of law people, a few who were simply society people, an occasional literary person, and a certain contingent from the City. The City makes a good mixture when it is carefully done. It brings in the practical, it brings a kind of intelligence always entertaining to the other classes, and a kind of prejudice and narrowness all its own, which is, as people say, "full of character" and amusing to the enlightened. This sort of thing is, perhaps, more practicable in Bayswater than it is in Belgravia.