And Watters, for some reason known only to himself, had seemed to him just that “hut.” He had had it decorated by an artist, who, recognising the individuality of the place, seemed to have listened in secret to its whispered wants; and when it was finished, Hamer Shaw strode happily up and down it, a burly, incongruous figure with its hat on the back of its head, satisfied to the very marrow, and growing younger every day. He had opened his eyes in a Westmorland cottage, and though he had left it so speedily that it was scarcely worth mention, some power, biding its time, had called him back, to his passionate content. Mrs. Shaw was of the type that belongs nowhere but to the absorbing house-world of the moment, and she had borne the transplanting cheerfully enough, if not with her husband’s bubbling ecstasy. But to Dandy it was almost as terrific an experience as a total change of planet. Bred in Lancashire, educated in London, finished abroad, she had no single tie with her new life and surroundings. She had been perfectly happy at Halsted, liking the constant excitement, the flow of money, the crowd of guests. She had understood everybody, and they had understood her. She had been an excellent hostess, and a very charming uncrowned queen, with not only Halsted, but all her circle at her feet. She had lived quickly and strongly, a little noisily, perhaps, but very vividly; and now, at the age of twenty-four, she was flung out of the rush into still water. Cessation may prove as distracting as revolution, and after five months she was even yet eminently perplexed. She had put no stone in the way of her father’s sudden desire, cheerfully resigning the old life for the new, for she was a happy creature with an interest in the world at large that would have stood the shock of almost any change. But this had proved so puzzling and disconcerting,--yielded so many emotions of an unexpected nature! Not only was she no longer a queen; she was scarcely an individual. With her somewhat exceptional powers of clear vision she soon discovered that. She was “the new girl from somewhere awful--I forget where; daughter of the new people at Watters--I forget who; new-rich dealers in something--I forget what.”