“Well, if Damon Lanyon is recalcitrant, Pythias Usher will soothe him down. So it will all come right. And you, camarado, shall dance at the wedding. I swear it. I must go and dress for dinner with some Philistines at Cricklewood. I shall be interested to see how God makes the creatures who live at Cricklewood. By the way, shall I give Ella your good wishes?” “Most certainly,” said Sylvester. He accompanied his guest to the front door; then returning to the consulting-room, he opened the window, with an exclamation of distaste. Roderick carried heavy scent about him, and Sylvester, like a wholesome Briton, detested scent. He also in his heart detested Roderick. Before preparing for his solitary dinner he went into his laboratory to examine some tubes of gelatine in which the anthrax bacillus was thriving. But he gazed at them somewhat absently. Scorn and contempt were in his heart,--contempt for the woman whom once he thought fit to be his own wife, and who had now thrown herself away upon this plausible but vulgar charlatan. “Like to like,” he muttered cynically. And putting down his gelatine he went upstairs, apparently satisfied with the examination he had entirely forgotten to make. CHAPTER IX--DAMON AND PYTHIAS Mr. Usher the elder had settled down in Ayresford a few months after the death of Sylvester's mother. At first he had taken a small cottage, then a semi-detached villa. Finally, he had transferred his household gods to a comfortable little house standing in its own grounds not far from Woodlands. He was not beloved in Ayresford on account of his habit of telling dull stories of uninteresting incidents in his past career; but as he went to church regularly and did no particular harm to anybody, he was accepted as a member of the humdrum society of the somnolent little town. No one knew much of his antecedents. He had been something in Australia and now lived on his means. That he had chummed with Mr. Lanyon,--a fact which he proclaimed so unceasingly that people grew nervous with teasing anticipation whenever Australia was mentioned in his presence,--was a sufficient guarantee of his respectability. Then Roderick came on flying visits and with his brilliant ways acquired popularity. Later, when he produced plays, painted pictures for the Academy, and wrote novels, Ayresford was quite proud of him. The father gained a vicarious reputation. They wanted to make him people's church-warden. But here Matthew Lanyon intervened. “I'm not a church-goer myself,” said he, “but I'm hanged if I'll let you make a mockery of the whole thing.”