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 It was an unlucky state of things, said the friends of both families. Rather depended upon how you looked at it though, thought the People Next Door. A Love Match is sometimes superior to a Mariage de Convenance, thought Ann Veronica, who had just returned from Dresden. Perhaps She Won't Be Quite So Stuck Up Now, wrote the Flapper from Eastbourne. He's swopped her for the absolute nicest gal in London, anyhow, said the Probationer in His Majesty's Horseguards. And Mamma said that she was surprised that Percy should talk in that way; and his Papa hoped that he wouldn't go making a fool of himself; and the Reverend Canon Fearon, when he called to ask the People Next Door what they thought about it, was rather inclined to agree with all parties, since yesterday at luncheon his Bishop had given utterance to the profoundly searching moral observation that the streams of tendency were apt to overlook their banks a little by the time the rising generation was ready to embark.

It is good to know that the Great did not lack spiritual aid in their hour of tribulation. But Pa in Mount Street and the Seventh Unmarried Daughter were not so chastened as they might have been, perhaps; and Father and Mother still went out to dinner regularly, in spite of this humiliation.

Nevertheless, Father and Mother declined the invitation to St. James's, Wilton Place, and to the reception