he lighted with triumph on the notion of
diverting the coach builders' monies to the
extinguishment of Leathern Baronetcy, and
so it was done. Builders went to the wall,
true to their word—being swamped in the
crisis—but the blood of the Sundons was
glorified through the length and breadth of
the county. For it was there, to be read in
the local prints, that plain Piers Sundon,
Esquire, headed the list with two hundred
pounds—which last act sent him away from
this earth quite contented and happy.

III.

ALICE was the name of the merchant's
daughter. A fair-haired, blue-eyed damsel,
with a strangely spiritual expression; with
finely cut features, very hard to conceive as
having come of plebeian parentage. She
nearly resembled those inspired faces which a
famous French artist (by name Aïry Schœffer),
who has painted Dante and Beatrice, has the
gift of fixing upon canvas. A very sweet,
quiet-tempered child, full of gentleness and
trust. In short, I had been in love with her
from the first day I saw her.

This had been at full work long before my
father's death: so there had been fine room
within me for play of two contrary feelings.
Rare tugging there was between them which
was the stronger. I inherited to the full
aversion to mushroom baronetcy sprouting
where it had no title to sprout; but not so
much personal hatred of the man. And then
there was that golden-haired maid—delicate
shoot, growing in lithe wind beside him, and
flowering over all that crookedness. She was
always, as it were, between me and him.
And so I brought myself to tolerate his
company—rather his sphere. For he seldom
obtruded himself; being a man of little speech
and mostly busy with his place and
improvements. A worthy man, all the country
gentlemen called him; of sound sense and
long head. That is, all save Continental Lord
Willoughby, who sneered at the man
perpetually—that is, when he came home for short
visits from foreign parts. He made himself
pleasant on the Leathern Baronet's house and
general taste. "Beautiful paint, sir," he
would say. "Like the red houses in the
pantomimes. You and I, who have fine
clarified blood, could not so much as conceive
such monstrosities. See what these plebeian
souls generate!"  With that he would go
off to foreign parts again (he had a villa
somewhere on some Italian river), and would
not come back for a year or more.

The Hackletons lived in a staring spick-
and-span country house, of dazzling vermilion,
and as like a small factory as can well
be fancied. It shone with plate glass and
white picking-out upon the vermilion, and
went by the name of the Villa Reale; a
name snatched up in Sir Thomas
Hackleton's little foreign touring. The plebeian
tone of the man slipped out unconsciously at
every turn. It was never Villa Reale to me;
but always The Factory, in plainest terms.

Yet, with that humble manner of his, and
unobtrusive carrying of his baronetcy, I felt,
on the occasion of my poor father's death, that
it would be no disparagement to pure blood, to
accept his pressing offer of a week's stay at the
Factory.

I was glad to be set free from the house
of mourning: glad, too, to be free from
distracting persecution of bills pouring down
on me, in a flood. People in the hall;
people at the gate; surly, and talking loudly.
To say nothing of the daily post. So my
heart was heavy enough, in all conscience, and
a change of that kind would be welcome.
Besides—and he suggested this humbly—I
might like to talk with him concerning the
disentanglement of my affairs; which were in a
very cheerless condition; and, he being pretty
well used to business, I might, perhaps, find
him of some little use. So he put it,
hesitatingly. To say the truth, I had been
shrinking away from bold, unassisted, looking
of money difficulties in the face, which had
now become absolutely necessary,—if the
depopulation of noble aristocratic timber was
ever to stop. So, I shook his hand thankfully,
and said I would go to him to the Factory
for one week.

The Vermilion Factory was all gilt inside,
wherever there was a projecting point to hold
gold leaf: cornices, frieze, doors, windows,
stair-balustrades, all blazing in the sun.
Golden-legged chairs, golden-legged tables,
and mirrors by the rood. Prodigious gardens:
a prodigious extent of greenhouse-glass, covering
in the rarest exotics. There was a pedantic
Scotch gardener with numerous assistants.
All these glories were shown to me by
the yellow-haired maiden in her own silent
undemonstrative manner; the merchant
baronet scarcely appearing at all. A strange
influence was shed upon me from the golden
locks as I followed; not so much from
voice as from manner. Those pale eyes were
looking out eternally with the French
painter's divine light. And so I followed
all day long, from plant to plant, wherein
she delighted most: from picture to picture,
and from book even to book. It was a
snatch from that old story, which is as old as
the world. She was wonderful for a plebeian
maid.

IV.

ON the second day I thought we might
try a little business; and the tin boxes,
which had come over on a visit, were brought
out and explored. These boxes were labelled
outside, with the style and title of the
Ancient Family; and there were disgorged
upon the study floor, mortgages in great
bundles, deeds of trust, settlements and
indentures, between Hebrew Levi of the one
part (needless to say who was of the other
part) accompanied by a light flotilla of