Jessica’s husband, Mr. Grenville, was sporting. His thoughts were centred in his stable, where he found an all-sufficient occupation for his intellectual powers in an endless buying, exchanging, selling, summering and wintering his stud; in the invention of improved bits, and the development of new ideas in saddlery; in the performance of operations that belong rather to the professional veterinary than to the gentleman at large, and in the conversation of his stud groom. These resources filled up all the margin that was left for a man who hunted four days a week in his own district, and who often got a fifth and even a sixth day in other counties accessible by rail. It may have been a natural result of Mr. Grenville’s devotion to the stable that Mrs. Grenville was absorbed by her nursery; or it may have been a natural bent on the lady’s part. However this might be, the lady and the gentleman followed parallel lines, in which their interests never clashed. He talked of hardly anything but his horses; she rarely mentioned any other subject than her children, or something bearing upon her children’s well-being. He believed his horses to be the best in the county; she considered her babies unsurpassed in creation. Both in their line were supremely happy. Mr. Morningside, married to Sir Godfrey’s youngest sister, Ruth, was distinctly Parliamentary; and had no sympathies in common with such men as Hugo Grenville. To him horses were animals with four legs who dragged burdens; who were expensive to keep, and whose legs were liable to “fill” or to develop superfluous bone on the slightest provocation. His only idea of a saddle horse was a slow and stolid cob, for whose virtuous disposition and powerful bone he had paid nearly three hundred pounds, and on which he pounded round the park three or four times every morning during the Parliamentary season, an exercise of which he was about as fond as he was of Pullna water, but which had been recommended him for the good of his liver. Mr. Morningside had a castle in the north, too near Newcastle to be altogether beautiful, and he had a small suite upon a fifth floor in Queen Anne’s Mansion. He had taken this apartment as a bachelor _pied à terre_ for the Parliamentary season; and he had laid considerable emphasis upon the landowner’s necessity for stern economy which had constrained him to take rooms so small as to be altogether “impossible” for his wife. Mrs. Morningside was, however, of a different opinion. No place was impossible for her which her dear Stuart deigned to occupy. She did not mind small rooms, or a fifth story. Was there not a lift, and were there not charming people living ever so much nearer the skies? She did not mind even what she gracefully described as “pigging it,” for her dear Stuart’s sake. She was utterly unlike her elder sister, and she had no compunction at placing over two hundred miles between her and her nursery.