And both Demo and the Countess laughed without restraint, and the pillars of Bursley society were mystified.

Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away.  And Jock winked back.

The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently.  At a stroke he had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in a month.  The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nellie mingled in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes.  He was inexpressibly happy.  Trouble, however, awaited him.

CHAPTER II

THE WIDOW HULLINS’S HOUSE

I

The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had asked a countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of Denry Machin.  He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow wonderful and dazzling, but he so regarded himself.  He could not get over it.  He had always been cheerful, even to optimism.  He was now in a permanent state of calm, assured jollity.  He would get up in the morning with song and dance.  Bursley and the general world were no longer Bursley and the general world; they had been mysteriously transformed into an oyster; and Denry felt strangely that the oyster-knife was lying about somewhere handy, but just out of sight, and that presently he should spy it and seize it.  He waited for something to happen.  And not in vain.

A few days after the historic revelry, Mrs Codleyn called to see Denry’s employer.  Mr Duncalf was her solicitor.  A stout, breathless, and yet muscular woman of near sixty, the widow of a chemist and druggist who had made money before limited companies had taken the liberty of being pharmaceutical.  The money had been largely invested in mortgage on cottage property; the interest on it had not been paid, and latterly Mrs Codleyn had been obliged to foreclose, thus becoming the owner of some seventy cottages.  Mrs Codleyn, though they brought her in about twelve pounds a week gross, esteemed these cottages an infliction, a bugbear, an affront, and a positive source of loss.  Invariably she talked as though she would willingly present them to anybody who cared to accept—­ “and glad to be rid of ’em!” Most owners of property talk thus.  She particularly hated paying the rates on them.

Now there had recently occurred, under the direction of the Borough Surveyor, a revaluation of the whole town.  This may not sound exciting; yet a revaluation is the most exciting event (save a municipal ball given by a titled mayor) that can happen in any town.  If your house is rated at forty pounds a year, and rates are seven shillings in the pound, and the revaluation lifts you up to forty-five pounds, it means thirty-five shillings a year right out of your pocket, which is the interest on thirty-five pounds.  And if the revaluation drops you to thirty-five pounds, it means