Why, why had great-great-great-grandfather Blessing married a Messiter of eccentric tendencies? And what a curse is money! Better decorum and a competence than stalled peacocks and a marriage with the daughters of Heth! It became the fashion in St. Eldred’s to affect, by contrast, a greater poverty than the circumstances of anyone necessitated. To give two cakes at tea became vulgar, and the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd took to going to church with only one Prayer Book between them. Nothing could have induced St. Eldred’s to confess that it knew anything of the Darnleys, and the various steps in Lady Adela’s progress were sternly ignored by a watchful world. Even when Mr. and Lady Adela Darnley entertained a Princess for some charitable function, the only comment made in St. Eldred’s was the tacit one involved in the simultaneous retirement to bed of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. Another outcast, however, was soon added to James and Robert--another topic for the silence of St. Eldred’s. For, after some secret correspondence, James Darnley’s sister eloped from the care of her aunts, and was next heard of under the wing of her brother’s wife in London. Within a year she had married a stockbroker of abundant wealth. The lips of St. Eldred’s snapped on this fulfilment of the disasters brought about by great-great-great-grandmother Messiter. The old dynasty of Dadd was ended in Darnley-on-Downe. The main royal line was wiped out, and the Reuben Dadds reigned in its stead. CHAPTER II