She studied her husband's pleasure in all things--yielding to him upon every point in which principle was not at stake. The house was filled with friends of his choosing--not one among those guests, in spite of their surface pleasantness, being congenial to a mind so simple and unworldly, so straight and thorough, as that of Christabel Tregonell. Without Jessie Bridgeman, Mrs. Tregonell would have been companionless in a house full of people. The vivacious widow, the slangy young ladies, with a marked taste for billiards and shooting parties, and an undisguised preference for masculine society, thought their hostess behind the age. It was obvious that she was better informed than they, had been more carefully educated, played better, sang better, was more elegant and refined in every thought, and look, and gesture; but, in spite of all these advantages, or perhaps on account of them, she was "slow:" not an easy person to get on with. Her gowns were simply perfect--but she had no _chic_. _Nous autres_, with ever so much less money to spend on our toilettes, look more striking--stand out better from the ruck. An artificial rose here--a rag of old lace--a fan--a vivid ribbon in the mazes of our hair--and the effect catches every eye--while poor Mrs. Tregonell, with her lovely complexion, and a gown that is obviously Parisian, is comparatively nowhere. This is what the Miss Vandeleurs--old campaigners--told each other as they dressed for dinner, on the second day after their arrival at Mount Royal. Captain Vandeleur--otherwise Poker Vandeleur, from a supposed natural genius for that intellectual game--was Mr. Tregonell's old friend and travelling companion. They had shared a good deal of sport, and not a little hardship in the Rockies--had fished, and shot, and toboggined in Canada--had played euchre in San Francisco, and monte in Mexico--and, in a word, were bound together by memories and tastes in common. Captain Vandeleur, like Byron's Corsair, had one virtue amidst many shortcomings. He was an affectionate brother, always glad to do a good turn to his sisters--who lived with a shabby old half-pay father, in one of the shabbiest streets in the debatable land between Pimlico and Chelsea--by courtesy, South Belgravia. Captain Vandeleur rarely had it in his power to do much for his sisters himself--a five-pound note at Christmas or a bonnet at Midsummer was perhaps the furthest stretch of his personal benevolence--but he was piously fraternal in his readiness to victimize his dearest friend for the benefit of Dopsy and Mopsy--these being the poetic pet names devised to mitigate the dignity of the baptismal Adolphine and Margaret. When Jack Vandeleur had a pigeon to pluck, he always contrived that Dopsy and Mopsy should get a few of the feathers. He did not take his friends home to the shabby little ten-roomed house in South Belgravia--such a nest would have too obviously indicated his affinity to the hawk tribe--but he devised some