Nicholas Kenyon's mother--a very large, handsome woman with brilliant teeth and amazing good-nature, who, even when in the best of health, never finished dressing till four o'clock in the afternoon and then never put much on--was undergoing a rest-cure in the west wing of Thrapstone-Wynyates when the boys arrived for the shooting. For nearly a year she had been playing auction every night until the very small hours and had, while in a nervous condition, stumbled across an emotional pamphlet written by a Welsh revivalist, which sent her straight to bed. She was really greatly shaken by it and perhaps a little bit frightened. It did not mince words about the future of women of her type, and she was shocked. Heaven seemed to her to be a place into which she had the same inherited right to walk as the Royal Enclosure at Ascot; but this vehement little book put a widely different point of view before her. Therefore it happened that the first woman to whom Peter was introduced was the little widow, "Baby" Lennox, who was acting as hostess. Two evenings before she met Peter she had received a letter from Kenyon, which ran as follows: Carlton Hotel, Dear Old Girl: I shall turn up at home on Thursday in time for tea. I hear that mother is enjoying herself in the throes of some very pleasant imaginary complaint of sorts and has retired to the solitude of the west wing. After a busy season she no doubt wishes to read Wells' new novel of socialism and seduction and the latest Masefield poems, which always remind me of the ramblings of rum-soaked sailors in a Portsmouth pub. I, for one, shall miss her florid and inaccurate presence and the deliciously flagrant way in which she cheats at Bridge; but if father has gathered round him an August house-party on his usual lines, I look forward to a cheery time,--dog eating dog, if I may put it like that. I am bringing with me the man with whom I have shared rooms at Oxford,--Peter Guthrie. He's the American of whom I have spoken to you before. I am especially anxious for him to meet you, because, while under the hypnotic influence of Oxford in all the beauty of late spring, he has been fool enough to get himself engaged. Now, not only is Guthrie very useful to me, having a wealthy father and being himself a generous soul, but I am going to New York with him in October to see if that city can be made to render up some of its unlimited dollars, and I don't want him to be hanging, booby-eyed, at the heels of a girl until such time as I have found my feet. You have a wonderful way with the very young and unsophisticated and I shall really be enormously obliged if you will work your never-failing wiles on my most useful friend and draw his at present infatuated mind away from the nice, harmless little girl who has just sailed. Fasten on him, my