Stuart had not attempted to reform Mike Finigan. He had adopted the easier and simpler plan of reforming Mike Finigan’s surroundings by obtaining him a post as water-bailiff to a friend who rented some fishing in the heart of the Finigan country. Mike was now living his natural life among his own people, breaking their heads and getting his own broken to their mutual contentment, and earning the character of the best water-bailiff in green Connacht. Alistair would have been glad to adjust his own life as successfully as he had adjusted his brother-in-law’s. In the first flush of her joy at his return, and gratitude for the rank he had given her, he had found it easy to persuade Molly to try the experiment of life in Beers Cooperage. He allowed the little woman to consider the scheme as a sort of practical joke, one of those slaps in the face to the hated middle class which she had learned to relish as a proof of aristocratic feeling. To their humble neighbours the invasion of such a spot as the Cooperage by such a figure as Lord Alistair--Mr. Stuart, he called himself to them--could only be understood in the light of those settlements and missions by which the well-disposed had recently striven to irradiate the gloom of darkest London. One of the great public schools had planted a hall in adjacent Battersea, the Wesleyans had a settlement somewhere Walworth way, the Church of England was bestirring itself in Southwark. The Cooperites were convinced that the new resident had come amongst them on evangelizing thoughts intent. They accepted the green paint and the flowers as a preliminary sop, and awaited with stolid resignation the tracts and the lectures on wireless telegraphy and the Andaman Islands that would surely follow. Alistair himself was surprised to find how little was changed in his life by the transmigration. The brief episode which lay behind him at Dinard took its place as a dream from which he had awakened. Respectable society, as represented by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, had dropped him once more, and his old friends had welcomed him back. The marriage announcement had been hailed in the circle of which he was the acknowledged chief as a masterpiece, reflecting more glory on him even than the bankruptcy which was now formally complete. If Alistair Stuart had gone under he had proved himself, like Samson, most formidable to the Philistines in his end. He was able to estimate the greatness of his triumph when he found that his first visitor was the Chevalier Vane. It was true that the Chevalier came as to the house of mourning, to condole and patronize rather than to congratulate, but Stuart knew him well enough to be sure that he would not have come at all unless he considered that there was still some distinction to be drawn from the association.