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 achievement; I know, however, that I have no right to throw myself bouquets. The young man did not acquit himself well under cross-examination, and you may judge of this “life’s passion”, as poor Phyllida would like to consider it, by the fact that from that day to this she has never heard from him. The entire family held me responsible! Hitherto, I had been on the best possible terms with my relations—except, of course, my brother-in-law Spenworth, and that is an honour which I would sooner be spared—; now I was the universal scapegoat. Without yielding in any way to cynicism, let me say that I was amused, after my Lord Culroyd’s first meeting with Hilda Surdan, to find that he did me the honour to make my house his own.

“Let me know some night when he and Hilda are not dining here,” said Will, when I reproached him for always now deserting us for his club.

For some reason there has never been any great cordiality between the cousins. Perhaps Culroyd is a little bit consequential in the way that he insists on his own dignity—a sort of instinctive attitude of self-preservation, as though he realized that he owes everything to an accident of sex and that, if Brackenbury and I changed places, he would have to change