Here he lived a kind and blameless life, but the life of a sprightly widow of forty, who is rich and childless, and does not intend to marry again. In the morning, after seeing his cook, he wrote a few letters (he did not use the telephone much because it tickled his ear, and he disliked talking into a little box where other people had talked and breathed) and these he generally sealed with a signet belonging to his step-mother’s grandmother, which had a coronet on it. He was a little snobbish in this regard, in a Victorian [Illustration: _Aunt Georgie_] old-fashioned way, for though his step-mother was no sort of relation to him he took over her relations as cousins, and hunted up the most remote connections of hers, for adoption, in the Peerage. His letters being finished he took his soft hat and sat at his club for half an hour reading the papers. Generally he walked out to lunch, and was called for by his car about a quarter to three. Sometimes he had a little shopping to do, and if not, went for a drive, sitting very upright, much on the look-out for acquaintances, and returned home for tea. After tea he sat on his sofa working at his embroidery, had a hot bath, and except when, about twice a week, he had a few people to dine with him, went out to dinner. He did not play bridge but patience and the piano, both of which he manipulated with a good deal of skill. When he entertained at his own house, his guests were chiefly young men with rather waggly walks and little jerky movements of their hands, and old ladies with whom he was always a great success, for he understood them so well. He called them all, young men and old ladies alike, ‘my dear,’ and they had great gossips together, and they often said Georgie was very wicked, which was a lie.