'So you allow your friends to insult me in your own house as they please, cousin Janet?' said the marquis, who probably felt her opposition the most formidable of all. ''Deed they canna say waur o' ye nor I think. Gang awa', an' repent. Consider yer gray hairs, man.' This was the severest blow he had yet received. He left the room, 'swearing at large.' Falconer followed him; but what came of it nobody ever heard. Major and Miss Hamilton were married within three months, and went out to India together, taking Nancy Kennedy with them. CHAPTER X. A NEOPHYTE. Before many months had passed, without the slightest approach to any formal recognition, I found myself one of the church of labour of which Falconer was clearly the bishop. As he is the subject, or rather object of my book, I will now record a fact which may serve to set forth his views more clearly. I gained a knowledge of some of the circumstances, not merely from the friendly confidences of Miss St. John and Falconer, but from being a kind of a Scotch cousin of Lady Janet Gordon, whom I had taken an opportunity of acquainting with the relation. She was old-fashioned enough to acknowledge it even with some eagerness. The ancient clan-feeling is good in this, that it opens a channel whose very existence is a justification for the flow of simply human feelings along all possible levels of social position. And I would there were more of it. Only something better is coming instead of it--a recognition of the infinite brotherhood in Christ. All other relations, all attempts by churches, by associations, by secret societies--of Freemasons and others, are good merely as they tend to destroy themselves in the wider truth; as they teach men to be dissatisfied with their limitations. But I wander; for I mentioned Lady Janet now, merely to account for some of the information I possess concerning Lady Georgina Betterton. I met her once at my so-called cousin's, whom she patronized as a dear old thing. To my mind, she was worth twenty of her, though she was wrinkled and Scottishly sententious. 'A sweet old bat,' was another epithet of Lady Georgina's. But she came to see her, notwithstanding, and did not refuse to share in her nice little dinners, and least of all, when Falconer was of the party, who had been so much taken with Lady Janet's behaviour to the Marquis of Boarshead, just recorded, that he positively cultivated her acquaintance thereafter.