Of his wife's family he saw a good deal, both at The Hawthorns and at No. 64, Leamington Road, and his liking for his brother-in-law did not increase. There was an air of condescension in Mr. Cæsar Walford's self-sufficiency that he found highly exasperating. The bass's debut had been fixed, during their absence, for the coming season, and he repeated the newest compliments paid to him by his master with the languid assurance of an artist whose supremacy was already acknowledged by the world. The latest burst of admiration into which Pincocca had been betrayed had always to be dragged by his parents from reluctant lips, but he never forgot any of it. Humphrey was sure that the artist thought even less of him than the neighbours did. Fiction he rarely read, he said. He said it with an elevation of his eyebrows, as if novels were fathoms beneath his attention. His eyebrows were, in fact, singularly expressive, and he could dismiss an author's claim to consideration, or ridicule a masterpiece, without uttering a word. There had been more truth than is usual in such statements when Humphrey said that he was not conceited on the score of his unprofitable spurs, but when he contemplated the complacent sneer by which this affected young man pronounced a novelist of reputation to be entirely fatuous, he was galled. Cynthia had told her mother how hard he was working, and once, when they were spending an evening at The Hawthorns some weeks after their return, his industry was mentioned. "Well," exclaimed the stock-jobber tolerantly, "and how's the story?--getting along, heh?" "Yes," said Kent, "I'm plodding on with it fairly well, sir." He was aware that his father-in-law did not view fiction seriously, either, and he always felt a certain restraint in speaking of his profession here. "And what's it about?" asked Mrs. Walford, in the indulgent tone in which she might have put such a question to a child. "Have you made Cynthia your lovely heroine, and are you flirting with her at Dieppe again? _I_ know what it'll be--hee, hee, hee! I'm sure you meant yourself by the hero in your last book; you know I told you that long ago!" He knew also that she would tell him that, just as mistakenly, about the hero of every book he wrote. "N-no," he said, "I shouldn't quite care to try to make 'copy' out of my wife. It wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be congenial." "You ought to know her faults better than anybody else, I should think, by this time," said Miss Wix. "And her virtues," said Humphrey. "Oh," said Miss Wix, with acidulated humour, "he says two months are quite long enough to find out all Cynthia's virtues, Louisa!" "I didn't hear him say anything of the sort," Said Mrs. Walford crossly. "Well, what is it about? Tell us!" He felt awkward and embarrassed. "I can't explain a plot; I'm very stupid at it," he said. "You shall have a copy the moment it is published, mater, and read the thing."