The Chronicles of Clovis

view from various aspects. As regards Comus, whose doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the present moment, she had mapped out in her mind

to acknowledge and be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain complacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment of half-a-dozen

parting seemingly superfluous injunctions to "be good." The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary thoroughfares of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face of modern London without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would have been eminently restful. With a growing sense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate should have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desi

ind that they could not be relied on to go all distances at all times. In an animal world, and a fiercely competitive animal world at that, something more was needed than the decorative abandon of the field lily, and it was just that something more which Comus seemed

caused her a flutter of anxiety, and she would have mentally likened herself to a Spartan mother sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State necessities. But with the best-beloved installed under her roof, occupying an unreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily sacrifices instead of providing the raw material for one, her feelin

d the gift of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert himself in that direction, and after a long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he would break forth into a torrential flow of sma

eputable set you would be doubtless less amusin

had been betrayed into a broader smile than she considere

Comus with a pleased chuckle; "I'm going to meet you and Unc

ittle gasp of surp

to dinner to-night?" she said; "and of course

hing tent. It was a compensating mercy that they disagreed rather more among themselves than they did with the outside world; every known variety and shade of religion and politics had been pressed into the family service to avoid the possibility of any agreement on the larger essentials of life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the Home Rule schism, the Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade were thankfully seized on as f

you applied it to Parliamentary debates. At her own dinn

" Francesca asked, with s

you, so you'd better think out a lot of annihil

I've heard of h

nice-looking in a solemn sort of

e choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception of

of the grand-nephews," she said, carelessly; "a little

with just the shade of pugn

also an heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature might carry him on to more definite courtship, if only from the desire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors into the background. It was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that the idea even crossed her mind of throwing her

ocialism, however, to penetrate below stairs; her cook and butler had every encouragement to be Individualists. Francesca, who was a keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to her hostess's kitchen and c

irst carefully read the menu from end to end, and then indulged in an equally careful though less open scrutiny of the girl who sat opposite her, the girl who was nobody in particular, but whose income was everything that could be desired. She was pretty in a restrained nut-brown fashion, and had a look of grave reflec

in your vis-à-vis," s

before," said Francesca; "he

Louvre; attributed to Leona

n and annoyance that Youghal should have been her helper. A stronger tinge of annoyance possessed her wh

east the day before was. Such lots of silver presents, quite a show. Of course there were a grea

heir twenty-five years of married life," said Lady Caro

ts present were rel

ginning well," murmu

ive years of married life a cl

; "it's my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists

oughal; she dimly remembered having seen her at one of Serena G

does have villas, and plays an extraordinary good game of bridge. Also she has th

has she

one, 'The Woman who wished it was Wednesday,' has been

should think so," s

us, and he was secretly rather proud of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative though he knew it to be. It had been, on his part, an unsought intimacy, and it would probably fall to pie

heme of current politics. He was not a person who was in much demand for public meetings, and the House showed no great impatience to hear his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed, was manifested rat

and they know it," he chirruped, defiantly; "they've become

t downhill," put in Lady Carol

simile and fell back on platitu

hat spoke of good understanding came to the heiress's face. It did not need the gift of the traditional intuition of her sex to enable Francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable banking account was already considerably attracted by the lively young Pagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning admiration. For the first time for many, many months Francesca saw her son's prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label "almost indecently rich." A wife with a really large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of character and

ndertone on the other side of Courtenay

e wife for a rising young politician. Go in and win

course of idle self-indulgence if he had never known of the existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard that young man as her son's evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify more than ever the character she had fastened on to him. For once in his life Comus appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly and making some use of his opportunities, and almost at the same moment Courtenay Youghal arrived on the scene as a possible and very dangerous rival. Against the good looks and fitful powers of fascination that Comus could bring into the field, the young politician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which would go far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the world, still more in those of a young girl in search of an ideal. Good-looking in his own way, if not on such showy lines as Comus, always well turned-out, witty, self-confident without being bumptious, with a conspicuous Parliamentary care

gentle purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of b

the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots o