“By Jove, a pretty woman, but a bit of a Tartar,” he said, thinking of Mrs. Maradick; then he turned round and walked up the stairs, down a passage to the right, and in a moment young Gale had opened their sitting-room door. The rooms under discussion were certainly very delightful and the view was charming, down over the town and out to the sea beyond. There were glimpses of the crooked streets and twisted gables, and, at last, the little stone pier and a crowd of herring-boats sheltering under its protection. In the sitting-room was Lady Gale, waiting to go down to dinner. At this time she was about fifty years of age, but she was straight and tall as she had been at twenty. In her young days as Miss Laurence, daughter of Sir Douglas Laurence, the famous Egyptologist, she had been a beauty, and she was magnificent now with a mass of snow-white hair that, piled high on her head, seemed a crown worthily bestowed on her as one of the best and gentlest women of her generation; but perhaps it was her eyes that made you conscious at once of being in the presence of some one whose judgment was unswerving with a tenderness of compassion that made her the confidante of all the failures and wastrels of her day. “Lady Gale will tell you that you are wrong,” some one once said of her; “but she will tell you so that her condemnation is better than another person’s praise.” At her side stood a man of about thirty, strikingly resembling her in many ways, but lacking in animation and intelligence. You felt that his carefully controlled moustache was the most precious thing about him, and that the cut of his clothes was of more importance than the cut of his character. “Well, Tony?” Lady Gale greeted him as he closed the door behind him. “Getting impatient? Father isn’t ready. I told him that we’d wait for him; and Alice hasn’t appeared——” “No, not a bit.” He came over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not hungry, as a matter of fact, too big a tea. Besides, where’s Alice?” “Coming. She told us not to wait, but I suppose we’d better.” “Oh, I say! Mother! I’ve discovered the most awfully decent fellow downstairs, really; I hope that we shall get to know him. He looks a most thundering good sort.” The red light from the setting sun had caught the church spire and the roofs of the market-place; the town seemed on fire; the noise of the fair came discordantly up to them. “Another of your awfully decent chaps!” This from his brother. “My dear Tony, you discover a new one every week. Only I wish you wouldn’t thrust them on to us. What about the charming painter who borrowed your links and never returned them, and that delightful author-fellow who was so beastly clever that he had to fly the country——?” “Oh, chuck it, Rupert. Of course one makes mistakes. I learnt a lot from Allison, and I know he always meant to send the links back and forgot; anyhow he’s quite welcome to them. But this chap’s all right—he is really—he looks jolly decent——”