But for ten long years they had no children, and never a scrap of the pig was wasted. And those ten years were years of increase. Then to put spirit to an ambition somewhat sordid, a little daughter was born. Both parents were beside themselves with joy. It is not everyone who can manage so much, after breeding nothing but gold or pork, and so they felt. It’s a common thing to be a mother after a lapse of one year, but after ten! they grew proud on the strength of it. And another ten years had trebled the ample fortune, nay, more than trebled it, and Mr. Sebberen, a comparatively young man—scarce forty—found himself with a daughter only ten years old. Another decade saw her twenty, he in the prime of life, her mother too. “Sebberen’s Pork” was of world-wide fame. The king and the chief prince had it on their breakfast tables; the poor still bought the sausages, and doctors still evinced a weakness for onions, milk, and tripe. No one would have known, to walk into this grand house, that its occupants once lived behind a little pork shop. For Susiebelle was handsome and clever, and had taught her mother a thing or two, and made great friends at school, not from any particular virtue, but from the glamour of outside show. She had a great deal of the outward semblance of that inward spirit that had made her father what he was. She was shallow and brilliant, and a perfect mimic of the world. When the world wept, she wept. They called her tender-hearted. When it laughed, she also laughed. They called her gay. When in a mood for admiration, she, too, had time for adulation, admired arts and music, knotted her pretty brows at science, and bought rich copies of all the works of fashionable poets. And what was all this for? Susiebelle at twenty made up her mind to marry, and marry as well as could be. Her father had just had a tremendous stroke of luck in business. She set her mind upon a duke, shooting high to reach as far as fortune favoured. One year had passed away, and Susiebelle’s ambition has not yet been granted. A poor baronet, an insipid, weak-eyed lord; not bad for a beginning, certainly. And this brings us to to-night, the amateur theatricals, and gay company. Sir John was under commission to paint the lovely Susiebelle, and had undertaken it with a fine courtesy that made her mother glow with pride to think the great were servants of the—the small. And Sir John would do it successfully after all, for she was pretty enough to appeal to the sense of beauty in any artist, and her parents were over and above willing to pay. And that is why Sir John went to the party—from motives of conscientiousness. And Miss Crokerly went because she wished to give pleasure to Rosalie. She, an ideal chaperon and friend. And Rosalie went because there was no way out of it.