"I shall--all. No--on second thoughts I draw the line at going to church. It's all very well if you've got a private chapel, or an easy chair in the chancel, or a family vault you can sit in. But I detest these modern arrangements; I object to be stuck in a tight position between two boards, with my feet in somebody else's hat, and somebody else's feet in mine, and to have people breathing down my collar and hissing and yelling alternately, in my ear." Again Miss Batchelor drew her eyebrows together in a friendly frown of warning. She liked the cosmopolitan Tyson and his reckless speech, and she had her own reasons for wishing him to make a good impression. But her hints had roused in him the instinct of antagonism, and he went on more recklessly than before. "No; you are perfectly wrong. I'm not an interesting atheist. I have the most beautiful child-like faith in--" "The God who was clever enough to make Mr. Nevill Tyson?" said Miss Batchelor, very softly. She had felt the antagonism, and resented it. At this point Sir Peter came down with one of those tremendous platitudes that roll conversation out flat. That was his notion of the duty of a host, to rush in and change the subject just as it was getting exciting. The old gentleman had destroyed many a promising topic in this way, under the impression that he was saving a situation. "You'll be bored to death--I give you six months," were Miss Batchelor's parting words, murmured aside over her shoulder. On their way home Stanistreet congratulated Tyson. "By Jove! you've fallen on your feet, Tyson. They tell me Miss Batchelor is interested in you." "I am not interested in Miss Batchelor. Who is she?" "She is only Miss Batchelor of Meriden Court--the richest land-owner in Leicestershire." "Good heavens! Why doesn't somebody marry her?" "Miss Batchelor, they say, is much too clever for that." "Is she?" And Tyson laughed, a little brutally. * * * * * Of course everybody called on the eccentric newcomer when they saw that the Morleys had taken him up. But before they had time to ask each other to meet him, Mr. Nevill Tyson had imported his own society from Putney or Bohemia, or some of those places. That was his first mistake. The next was his marriage. In fact, for a man in Tyson's insecure position, it was more than a mistake; it was madness. He ought to have married some powerful woman like Miss Batchelor, a woman with ideas and money and character, to say nothing of an inviolable social reputation. But men like Tyson never do what they ought. Miss Batchelor was clever, and he hated clever women. So he married Molly Wilcox. Molly Wilcox was nineteen; she had had no education, and, what was infinitely worse, she had a vulgar mother. And as Mr. Wilcox might be considered a negligible quantity, the chances were that she would take after her mother.