THERE was no competition for the mantle of Annette. In the Burdley Park house the Folyats began to realise that they were increasingly uncomfortable. Annette's powers of organisation had not been great, but she had acquired considerable skill in preventing the consequences of her mistakes and laches being generally felt. . . . When she left there was a sort of domestic collapse. No meals were ever punctual, nor were they tolerably cooked. Mrs. Folyat's temper suffered, and she lashed her three remaining daughters with shrill sarcasm. . . . Mary had a sudden influx of new pupils and absented herself all day long. Gertrude arranged for a round of visits, and Minna became extremely zealous in church work, while Mrs. Folyat simmered in her indignation against the world in general, Annette in particular, and especially against love, that laughing enemy of public opinion. Not Annette's duplicity, not her secrecy, not her defiance of parental authority so rankled in her mother's mind as the black-and-white fact before all the vulgar, prying world that Bennett's father was not respectable. The unlucky Bennett had inserted an advertisement of the marriage--he read it many times himself: _Lawrie--Folyat. On the_ 28_th Sept., Edward Bennett, youngest son of James Lawrie, to Annette, youngest daughter of the Rev. Francis Folyat;_ for it was the first time he had seen words of his own in print. Lower down on the same page was a short paragraph describing his father's appearance in the police court, where, surely, the magistrate had seldom had such an entertaining quarter of an hour. Old Lawrie pursued the argument begun overnight with the policeman (Serge had the third movement of it) and closed it with variations on an idea borrowed from Ruskin, that, Society being responsible for every crime and misdemeanour committed by its individual members, lots should be cast in each case as to which citizen of a certain district should bear the brunt of it. This, he said, would at any rate promote a feeling of responsibility towards one's neighbour, and would in time lead each man to love his neighbour as himself. When that came about there would be neither crime nor misdemeanour. "Till then," said the magistrate, "I must administer the law as it stands. I am not a philosopher, but it seems to me that the condition you aspire to does obtain. Men do love their neighbours as themselves: that is, very little." (Laughter.) James Lawrie, cotton-broker and journalist, was fined ten shillings and costs.