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Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied much, on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and satisfactory settlement of Charlie’s future.

Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past. “Yon wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you’re wasting your time now,” he remarked, when Charlie and he were left alone after dinner.

Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha’s picture. “With a sigh he turned to his uncle.

“That’s all very well,” he said tolerantly, “but what is there for me to do?”

“If you took more interest in country pursuits it might be different. But you don’t hunt, you shoot very seldom—-“

“And very badly.”

“And not at all well, as you admit. You say you won’t become a magistrate, you show no interest in politics or–or–social questions. You simply moon about.”

Charlie was vividly reminded of a learned judge whom he had once heard pronouncing sentence of death. His uncle’s denunciation seemed to lack its appropriate conclusion–that he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead. He was roused to defend himself.

“You’re quite wrong, uncle,” he said. “I’m working hard. I’m writing a history of the family.”

“A history of the family!” groaned Mr. Vansittart. “Who wants one? Who’ll read one?”

“From an antiquarian point of view–” began Charlie stoutly.

“Of all ways of wasting time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most futile;” and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an air of finality.

“Now the Agatha Merceron story,” continued Charlie, “is in itself—“

“Perhaps we’d better finish our talk tomorrow. The ladies will, expect us in the garden.”

“All right,” said Charlie, with much content. He enjoyed himself more in the garden, for, while Lady Merceron and her brother in law took counsel, he strolled through the moonlit shrubberies with Mrs. Marland, and Mrs. Marland was very sympathetically interested in him and his pursuits. She was a little eager woman, the very antithesis in body and mind to Millie Bushell; she had plenty of brains but very little sense, a good deal of charm but no beauty, and, without any counterbalancing defect at all, a hearty liking for handsome young men. She had also a husband in the City.

“Ghost-hunting again to-night, Mr. Merceron?” she asked, glancing up at Charlie, who was puffing happily at a cigar.

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m very regular.”

“And did you see anyone?

“I saw Millie Bushell.”

“Miss Bushell’s hardly ghost-like, is she?”

“We’ll,” said Charlie meditatively, “I suppose if one was fat oneself one’s ghost would be fat, wouldn’t it?”

Mrs. Marland, letting the problem alone, laughed softly.

“Poor Miss Bushell! If she heard you say that! Or if Lady Merceron heard you!”

“It would hardly surprise my mother to hear that I thought Millie Bushell plump. She is plump, you know;” and Charlie’s eyes expressed a candid homage to truth.

“Oh, I know what’s being arranged for you.”

“So do I.”

“And you’ll do it. Oh, you think you won’t, but you will. Men always end by doing what they’re told.”

“Does Mr. Marland?”

“He begins by it,” laughed his wife.

“Is that why he’s not coming till Saturday week?”

“Mr. Merceron! But what was Miss Bushell doing at the Pool? Did she come to find you?”