Well, well, suppose we try about half the quantity, very dry, and make an effort to eat a cutlet or a little bit of plain roast mutton, Dr. Rylance would murmur tenderly to a stout middle-aged lady who had confessed that her appetite was inferior to her powers of absorption. Men who were drinking themselves to death in a gentlemanly manner always went to Dr. Rylance. He did not make their lives a burden to them by an impossible regimen: he kept them alive as long as he could, and made departure as gradual and as easy as possible; but his was no kill-or-cure system; he was not a man for heroic remedies. And now Urania had found that her father was not a great man--that he was praised and petted, and had made his nest in the purple and velvet of this world, but that he was not looked up to or pointed at as one of the beacon-lights on the coast-line of the age--and that he being so small a Somebody, she his daughter was very little more than Nobody. Knowing this, she had made up her mind that whenever Brian Wendover of the Abbey should appear upon the scene, she would do her uttermost to make him her captive. CHAPTER XV. MR. WENDOVER PLANS AN EXCURSION. The happy summer glided by--the season of roses and butterflies, strawberries and cream, haymaking, lawn tennis, picnics, gipsy teas--an idle, joyous life under blue skies. The Knoll family gave themselves up heart and soul to summer pleasures--simple joys which were at once innocent and inexpensive--and Ida Palliser found herself a sharer in all these holiday rambles. Conscience told her that she had no right to be there, that she was an impostor sailing under false colours. Conscience, speaking more loudly, told her that she had no right to accept Brian Wendover's quiet homage, no right to be so happy in his company day after day; for there were few of their summer joys in which he was not among them. Bessie was warm in her praises of him, full of wonder at his having developed into such a companionable being. 'Norway has done him good,' she said. 'He used to be such a reserved creature, dawdling away day after day in his library, poring over Greek and Latin, and now he is almost as companionable as Brian Walford.' 'He'll have to live a good many years before he's up to B. W.,' said Horace, who had walked across the hills for an afternoon at home and the chance of a tip, 'B. W. knows every music-hall in London, and can sing a topical song as well as men who get their sixty pounds a week.' 'I wish you wouldn't put on that knowing air. What do you know of men who get sixty pounds a week?' exclaimed Bessie, contemptuously. 'As much as you do, anyhow,' answered her brother.