Except where his feelings were deeply involved, as they had been in that matter of Beatrix's affair with the Marquis de Lassigny, George Grafton was a man who exercised authority with an easy grace which those who came within its sphere scarcely realised as authority, so much did his wishes seem to comply with their own. His family appeared to possess and to exercise complete liberty of action, and he to fall in with their wishes as much as they with his. But this was because they all loved one another, and they had kept him young between them. If any of them wanted to do anything that he did not care about, he had only to say that he didn't care about it, and they not only didn't do it, but didn't want to do it, because there was nothing so well worth doing as pleasing him. This was in small matters; but there had never been any big difference of desire, except in Beatrix's affair, which he had not handled with his wonted easy detachment. But in the way that had turned out he had proved to have been in the right, in a good many ways which she had not been able to see, and now did see; and his treatment of her during her recovery from love's illness had restored his happy ascendancy, somewhat shaken while the illness had lain heavily upon her. With his servants and dependants there was never any trouble at all. They liked serving him, and took a pride in serving him well. In business it was the same; but on the rare occasions on which he had had to assert his authority he had done it with a decision that showed his customary easy manner to rest upon strength, and not upon a weak complaisance. In business negotiation he usually had his way, because he had always made up his mind beforehand what his way was to be, and that it was reasonable that he should have it. By this means he missed the _coups_ that come from imposing unreasonable conditions on an opponent, but gained a reputation for fairness and straightness of dealing which made up for it. He was, in fact, a man of decision and character, under his amiable easy-going exterior, and he was not afraid of a contest, though he preferred not to enter one unless he thought he had a good chance of coming out victor. It is doubtful, however, whether he had ever entered into one which would provide such a test of his qualities, as when he decided to get rid of the Vicar of Abington--the Reverend A. Salisbury Mercer, M.A. This was after the commotion occasioned by Denis Cooper's refusal of the living of Surley had died down.