"The God who was clever enough to make Mr. Nevill Tyson?" said Miss

Batchelor, very softly. She had felt the antagonism, and resented it.

At this point Sir Peter came down with one of those tremendous platitudes

that roll conversation out flat. That was his notion of the duty of a

host, to rush in and change the subject just as it was getting exciting.

The old gentleman had destroyed many a promising topic in this way, under

the impression that he was saving a situation.

"You'll be bored to death--I give you six months," were Miss Batchelor's

parting words, murmured aside over her shoulder.

On their way home Stanistreet congratulated Tyson.

"By Jove! you've fallen on your feet, Tyson. They tell me Miss Batchelor

is interested in you."

"I am not interested in Miss Batchelor. Who is she?"

"She is only Miss Batchelor of Meriden Court--the richest land-owner in

Leicestershire."

"Good heavens! Why doesn't somebody marry her?"

"Miss Batchelor, they say, is much too clever for that."

"Is she?" And Tyson laughed, a little brutally.

* * * * * Of course everybody called on the eccentric newcomer when they saw that

the Morleys had taken him up. But before they had time to ask each other

to meet him, Mr. Nevill Tyson had imported his own society from Putney or

Bohemia, or some of those places.

That was his first mistake.

The next was his marriage. In fact, for a man in Tyson's insecure

position, it was more than a mistake; it was madness. He ought to have

married some powerful woman like Miss Batchelor, a woman with ideas and

money and character, to say nothing of an inviolable social reputation.

But men like Tyson never do what they ought. Miss Batchelor was clever,

and he hated clever women. So he married Molly Wilcox. Molly Wilcox was

nineteen; she had had no education, and, what was infinitely worse, she

had a vulgar mother. And as Mr. Wilcox might be considered a negligible

quantity, the chances were that she would take after her mother.

The mystery was how Tyson ever came to know these people. Mr. Wilcox was

a student and an invalid; moreover, he was excessively morose. He would

not have called, and even Mrs. Wilcox could hardly have called without

him. Scandal-mongers said that Tyson struck up an acquaintance with the

girl and her mother in a railway carriage somewhere between Drayton and

St. Pancras, and had called on the strength of it. It did great credit to

his imagination that he could see the makings of Mrs. Nevill Tyson in

Molly Wilcox, dressed according to her mother's taste, with that hair of

hers all curling into her eyes in front, and rumpled up anyhow behind.

However, though I daresay his introduction was a little informal and

obscure, there was every reason for the intimacy that followed. The

Wilcoxes were unpopular; so, by this time, was Tyson. In cultivating him

Mrs. Wilcox felt that she was doing something particularly esoteric and

rather daring. She had taken a line. She loved everything that was a

little flagrant, a little out of the common, and a little dubious. To a

lady with these tastes Tyson was a godsend; he more than satisfied her

desire for magnificence and mystery. For economical reasons Mrs. Wilcox's

body was compelled to live with Mr. Wilcox in a cottage in Drayton Parva;

but her soul dwelt continually in a side-street in Bayswater, in a region

haunted by the shabby-refined, the shabby-smart, and the innocently

risky. Mrs. Wilcox, I maintain, was as innocent as the babe unborn. She

believed that not only is this world the best of all possible worlds, but

that Bayswater is the best of all possible places in it. So, though she

was quite deaf to many of the chords in Tyson's being, her soul responded

instantly to the note of "town." And when she discovered that Tyson had

met and, what is more, dined with her old friends the Blundell-Thompsons

"of Bombay," her satisfaction knew no bounds.




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