Sir Percy Carlyon had declined to be domiciled at the British Embassy, as Lord Baudesert urged, but took modest chambers close at hand. He found plenty to do, and although he was supposed to be capable of bullying Lord Baudesert, it was impossible to force the Ambassador to a regular course of work every day. Sir Percy, however, watched the chances, and succeeded in getting more out of Lord Baudesert than any one else had ever done. Moreover, Sir Percy was a _persona grata_ to Mrs. Vereker and the three girls, not that this mattered to Lord Baudesert, who, as far as women were concerned, was a natural and incurable bully and buccaneer. Lord Baudesert was neither bad-tempered nor bad-hearted, but it cannot be denied that he was a trying person domestically. It was in vain that Sir Percy reminded his aunt and cousins that Lord Baudesert had no power of life or death over them and could not eat them. Mrs. Vereker was horrified at the suggestion that she should exercise a little personal liberty, and the three girls thought Sir Percy slightly cracked when he advised them to assert themselves boldly in the presence of their uncle. On the whole, however, Sir Percy liked his new outlook upon the world, and considered that he was now in the sunshine of good fortune. Mrs. Vereker, Jane, Sarah and Isabella worked hard in the society grind, and Lord Baudesert was less lazy in social than in official life. Sir Percy, up to the evening of the ball, had not paid a single visit, except of an official nature, but on the Tuesday afternoon following he put on a frock-coat and started out armed with his card case. In front of his own door he hesitated a moment to think whether he should call on the Chantreys or the Armytages. Ridiculous to say, Sir Percy had been haunted by the remembrance of the airy grace, the seductive eyes of this provincial coquette--for so he classified Lucy Armytage; and, calling himself a great fool, he turned his steps first towards the down-town hotel where the Armytages lived. He began to reckon what Lucy’s age might be. She had a peculiar guilelessness of look and voice and manner which seldom lasts beyond a girl’s twenty-first birthday; yet he judged her to be not less than twenty-five. One thing about her, he admitted, was adorable--an obvious ignorance of evil, a lovely innocence, which revealed itself readily to the experienced eyes of a man of the world. Sir Percy hated knowing women, and that recalled Alicia Vernon. He doubted if she, even as a young girl, had ever been truly innocent in mind.