Ira Waddy’s hot ardency of nature could not bear coolly any wrong. Wrong came to him. It would have extinguished an ancestor of the Whitegift class. Him it only kindled to counter-fire. He had his great quarrel with life, as many men have; he, in his young life. The Janeways had always been kind to him; so had their neighbours, the Beldens. In childish sports and youthful intercourse with the children of both families, he had often talked with enthusiasm of tropic splendours and India, his destined abode. When the world of his early associations became too narrow for him--too narrow because there his wrong would meet and hurtle him daily--then he thought again of India, and tropic indolence, and thoughtless people. Being an orphan and without kin, he could go where he chose. He chose India. There, as the years passed, he became rich and powerful, a nabob, a merchant prince; but with all that this tale has no concern--it is written merely to chronicle the facts of his Return. CHAPTER III IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE The _Niagara_ was running into Halifax. It was early of a bright summer morning, and all the passengers came on deck, joyous with hopes of _terra firma_. There was our hero, Mr. Ira Waddy; there were two shipboard friends of his, Harry Dunston and Gilbert Paulding; there was the Budlong family, to wit: old De Flournoy Budlong; Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong, his second wife, luxuriantly handsome, and greatly his junior; Tim De Flournoy Budlong, and Arabella De Flournoy Budlong; and accompanying them was M. Auguste Henri Miromenil de Châteaunéant. They all looked fresh and well-dressed in shore toggery. The Budlongs, particularly, were in full bloom. They were always now in full bloom, and meant the world should fully know they were returning from Europe with fashion and the fashions, with a gallery of pictures and a Parisian pronunciation. Old Budlong had once been a brisk young clerk, lively and lucky. He was called Flirney then. He had traded in most things and all had yielded him pelf. He was now a capitalist, fat and uneasy, with a natural jollity which he thought unbecoming his position and endeavoured to suppress. Budlong in full bloom was as formal as a ball bouquet. It was under the régime of the second wife that the Budlongs had blossomed. After one season of gorgeous grandeur, but doubtful triumph, at home, they, or rather the master-she of their social life, determined to be stamped into undoubted currency by the cachet of Europe and Paris. They went, were _parisinés_, and were now returning, wiser and worse. They were now the De Flournoy B.’s, and brought with them De Châteaunéant, as attaché of mother and step-daughter, either or both. Old Bud, on marital and paternal grounds, disliked the Gaul.