"Dear me, _how_ nice!--_how_ comfortable!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, sailing up to the hearth and seating herself in a deep leather chair. "Come in, Mr. Westmoreland. Come along to the fire, dears." And she called her brood around her. Eleanor, who had caressing ways, knelt down at her chaperon's feet on the soft oriental carpet, and she pulled out the frills of lace round the girl's white neck and elbows with a motherly gesture. "Dear child!" she ejaculated fondly, "doesn't she"--appealing to her husband--"remind you exactly of a bit of fifteenth century Nankin?" "I should like to see the bit of porcelain, Nankin or otherwise, that would remind me exactly of Miss Nelly," replied the gallant major, bowing to the kneeling girl. "I would buy that bit, whatever price it was." "That's supposing you could get it," interrupted Mr. Westmoreland, with a laugh. "It is the very shade of blue, with that grey tinge in it," murmured Mrs. Duff-Scott. But at the same time she was thinking of a new topic. "I have asked Mr. Yelverton to dine with us to-morrow, my dear," she remarked, suddenly, to her spouse. "We wanted another man to make up our number." "Oh, have you? All right. I shall be very glad to see him. He's a gentlemanly fellow, is Yelverton. Very rich, too, they tell me. But we don't see much of him." "No," said Mr. Westmoreland, withdrawing his eyes from the contemplation of Eleanor and her æsthetic gown, "he's not a society man. He don't go much into clubs, Yelverton. He's one of the richest commoners in Great Britain--give you my word, sir, he's got a princely fortune, all to his own cheek--and he lets his places and lives in chambers in Piccadilly, and spends nearly all his time when he's at home in the slums and gutters of Whitechapel. He's got a mania for philanthropy, unfortunately. It's an awful pity, for he really _would_ be a good fellow." At the word "philanthropy," the major made a clandestine grimace to Elizabeth, but composed his face immediately, seeing that she was not regarding him, but gazing with serious eyes at the narrator of Mr. Yelverton's peculiarities. "He's been poking into every hole and corner," continued Mr. Westmoreland, "since he came here, overhauling the factory places, and finding out the prices of things, and the land regulations, and I don't know what. He's just been to Sandhurst, to look at the mines--doing a little amateur emigration business, I expect. Seems a strange thing," concluded the young man, thoughtfully, "for a rich swell of his class to be bothering himself about things of that sort."