One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people; for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years. But all had gone so well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some strangeness,--that Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and they had ceased to look for anything sensational. This ball was to be the seal of their approval. It had been mentioned in ‘Truth’ with that freshness and point all its own. What character than Gaston’s could more appeal to his naive imagination? It said in a piquant note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero. Everything was ready. Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had done their parts. At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands. Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway. He would visit the village school. He found the junior curate troubling the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for them, and begging them to do their duty “in that state of life,” etc. He listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the children to sing. With inimitable melancholy they sang: “Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England!” Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song. With his thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice. He asked them little out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was, giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of information, without the nature of a lesson. Then he taught them the chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately: “Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!” It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward driving past. He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world, nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.