Next to Captain Lyster sits Miss Lexden, Barbara's aunt; a fat, placid-looking old lady, in a flaxen front, which, with a cap covered with ribbons and flowers, seemed skewered on to her skull by a couple of large pins, the knobs of which presented themselves like bosses on her temples. She was a cousin of Sir Marmaduke's, and the elder sister of the old man's one love, so that there was a great link of confidence between them; and she liked coming to Bissett, where the living was always so good, and where she met people who amused her. That pretty girl talking to her is Miss Townshend,--a delicious creature in a country-house, who can ride across country, and play croquet and billiards, and sing little French _chansons_, and dance, and who even has been known on occasions to drive a dog-cart and smoke a cigarette. To secure her, entails inviting her father, an intensely respectable, dreary old gentleman--that is he, in the starched check cravat and the high coat-collar; a City magnate, who confines his reading to the City article, and has to be promptly extinguished when he attempts to talk about the "policy of Rooshia." He is endeavouring just now to strike up a conversation with his neighbour Mr. Vincent, the member for Wessex, and Chairman of the Dinner-Committee of the House of Commons; but Mr. Vincent is deep in the discussion of a cheese-omelette, and is telegraphing recommendation thereof to Mrs. Vincent, a merry, red-faced looking little woman, who, with her husband, passed her whole life in thinking about good eating. Sir Marmaduke's solicitor, Mr. Russell, a quiet old gentleman, clad in professional black, who was always trying to hide his soft wrinkled hands under his ample coat-cuffs; and Sir Marmaduke's factotum, Major Stone, otherwise Twenty Stone, a big, broad-chested, jovial, bushy-whiskered, moneyless freelance,--completed the party. CHAPTER III. STARTING THE GAME. "Halloa!" suddenly shouted Sir Marmaduke from his vantage-ground on the rug. Every body looked up. "Halloo!" shouted the old gentleman again, plunging his hands over the wrists in his trousers-pockets, and bringing to the surface a couple of letters. "By Jove! I forgot to tell Mrs. Mason or any of them that more people were coming down! Here, Stone--somebody--just ring that bell, will you? Here are two men coming down to-day--be here by dinner, they say; and I forgot to order rooms and things for them!" "Who are they, Sir Marmaduke?" asked Lyster languidly. "What the deuce is that to you, sir?" roared the old gentleman. "Friends of mine, sir! That's enough, isn't it? Have you finished lunch." "I haven't had any," said Lyster. "I never eat it. I hate lunch." "Great mistake that," said Mr. Vincent, wiping his mouth. "Ought always to eat whenever you can. 'Gad, for such an omelette as that I'd get up in the middle of the night."