Young Dickson Ingworth had been back from his journalistic mission to Italy for two or three weeks. His articles in the "Daily Wire" had attracted a good deal of attention. They were exceedingly well done, and Herbert Toftrees was proud of his protégé. He did not know--no one knew--that the Denstone master on the committee was a young man with a vivid and picturesque style who had early realised Ingworth's incompetence as mouthpiece of the expedition and representative of the Press. The young gentleman in question, anxious only for the success of the mission, had written nearly all Ingworth's stuff for him, and that complacent parasite was now reaping the reward. But there was another, and greater, reason for Toftrees' welcome. Old Mr. Ingworth had died while his nephew was in Rome. The young man was now a squire in Wiltshire, owner of a pleasant country house, a personage. "Ask Mr. Dickson Ingworth in here," Toftrees said again. Ingworth came into the library. He wore a morning coat and carried a silk hat--the tweeds and bowler of bohemia discarded now. An unobtrusive watch chain of gold had taken the place of the old silver-buckled lip-strap, and a largish black pearl nestled in the folds of his dark tie. He seemed, in some subtle way, to have expanded and become less boyish. A certain gravity and dignity sat well upon his fresh good looks and the slight hint of alien blood in his features was less noticeable than ever. Toftrees shook his young friend warmly by the hand. The worthy author was genuinely pleased to see the youth. He had done him a good service recently, pleased to exercise patronage of course, but out of pure kindness. Ingworth would not require any more help now, and Toftrees was glad to welcome him in a new relation. Toftrees murmured a word or two of sorrow at Ingworth's recent bereavement and the bereaved one replied with suitable gravity. His uncle's sudden death had been a great grief to him. He would have given much to have been in England at the time. "And the end?" asked Toftrees in a low voice of sympathy. "Quite peaceful, I am glad to say, quite peaceful." "That must be a great consolation!" This polite humbug disposed of, both men fell immediately into bright, cheerful talk. The new young squire was bubbling over with exhilaration, plans for the future, the sense of power, the unaccustomed and delightful feeling of solidity and _security_. He told his host, over their cigars, that the estate would bring him in about fifteen or sixteen hundred a year; that the house was a fine old Caroline building--who his neighbours were, and so on. "Then I suppose you'll give up literature?" Toftrees asked. Dickson Ingworth was about to assent in the most positive fashion to this question, when he remembered in whose presence he was, and his native cunning--"diplomacy" is the better word for a man with a Caroline mansion and sixteen hundred a year--came to his aid.