Lucy’s own mother, who had died two years before Lucy’s marriage, had been a matron of the old school, kind and considerate to her servants, as she would have been to her pony or her dog, but with far less consideration for their individuality than many sympathetic people give to that of their four-footed pets. She expected her maids to go to her place of worship. She would have been surprised ever to see them with a book, save on Sunday, and then only with books which she “lent” them. She allowed no variation in their household uniform, and in their “best” dresses she looked askance at a puff or a flounce. Their letters had to be addressed to their unprefixed names. No visitors were allowed. They had their regulated “hours off” once a week, and these were never diverged from, varied or exceeded. A request for an arrangement for a fortnight’s holiday would have been met by instant dismissal. Even in those earlier days, when Lucy had never questioned the righteousness of these domestic methods, she had yet somehow got an uneasy consciousness that they were tottering to their fall. She could not tell how she had got that impression, whether from murmurs in the kitchen or from added tenacity in the hand laid on the domestic reins. The house had been handsome, well kept and comfortable; the service perfectly regulated and reasonably well paid, the conditions which long defer catastrophe whether in states or households. It had been as one of the last strongholds of an ancient _régime_ still holding out, though outposts are fast falling. Lucy’s father had not survived his wife many months. He had been counted a wealthy man, but there had been such a revolution in his special article of commerce that when he died his estate barely met his liabilities. Jem Brand, the young stockbroker, had received a small dowry with Florence when he married her. But after the father’s debts were paid, there was not a penny left for Lucy, who had thankfully utilised her natural gifts and the excellent training they had received by accepting the position of art teacher at the St. George’s Institute, which position she had filled for more than a year before her marriage. Perhaps Lucy had grown more inclined to broader ways of thought and simpler ways of life, because they had brought its crowning joy into her own life. Charlie Challoner had met her first in her independent breadwinning capacity. He was wont to say that if he had known her as a rich man’s daughter he would not have dared to woo her, and it is quite certain that a young professional man, with all his way to make, and with neither family nor fortune to serve him, would have received scant welcome from either of Lucy’s parents.