Mr. James Polydore May, as I have already ventured to suggest, was nothing if not respectable. He was a J.P. This,--in English suburban places at least,--is the hall-mark of an unimpeachable rectitude. Another sign of his good standing and general uprightness was, that at stated seasons he always went for a change of air. We all know that the person who remains in one place the whole year round is beyond the pale and cannot be received in the best society. Mr. May had a handsome house and grounds in the close vicinity of Richmond, within easy distance of town, but when the London “season” ended, he and Mrs. May invariably discovered their home to be “stuffy,” and sighed for more expansive breathing and purer oxygen than Richmond could supply. They had frequently taken a shooting or fishing in Scotland, but that was in the days when there were still matrimonial hopes for Diana, and when marriageable men could be invited, not only to handle rod and gun, but to inspect their “one ewe-lamb,” which they were over-anxious to sell to the highest bidder. These happy dreams were at an end. It was no longer worth while to lay in extensive supplies of whisky and cigars by way of impetus to timid or hesitating Benedicts, when they came back from a “day on the moors,” tired, sleepy and stupid enough to drift into proposals of marriage almost unconsciously. Mr. May seldom invited young men to stay with him now, for the very reason that he could not get them; they found him a “bore,”--his wife dull, and his daughter an “old maid,”--a term of depreciation still freely used by the golden youth of the day, despite the modern and more civil term of “lady bachelor.” So he drew in the horns of his past ambition, and consoled himself with the society of two or three portly men of his own age and habits,--men who played golf and billiards, and who, if they could do nothing else, smoked continuously. And for the necessary “change of air,” the seaside offered itself as a means of health without too excessive an expenditure, and instead of “chasing the wild deer and following the roe,” a simple hammock chair on the sandy beach, and a golf course within easy walking distance provided sufficient relaxation. Not that Mr. May was in any sense parsimonious; he did not take a cottage by the sea, or cheap lodgings,--on the contrary, he was always prepared to “do the thing handsomely,” and to select what the house-agents call an “ideal” residence.