Thus did Larry Coppinger, informally but effectively, introduce himself to his second-cousins, the Talbot-Lowrys.

CHAPTER IV

A fortnight or so after the moving incidents that have just been recited, Miss Frederica Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of that ilk, were spending a long and agreeable Sunday afternoon with their relatives at Mount Music, elders and youngsters being segregated, after their kind, and to their mutual happiness.

Major Talbot-Lowry, very well pleased with himself, very tall and authoritative, was standing, from force of habit, on the rug in front of the fire-place in the Mount Music drawing-room, and was cross-examining Miss Coppinger on her proposed arrangements for herself and her nephew, while he drank his tea in gulps, each succeeded by burnishing processes, with a brilliant silk bandanna handkerchief, such as are necessitated by a long and drooping moustache.

All good-looking people are aware of their good looks, but the gift of enjoying them, that had been lavishly bestowed on Dick, is denied to many; on the other hand, the companion gift, of realising when they are becoming pleasures of memory, had been withheld from him.  Dick was of the happy temperament that believes in the exclusive immortality of his own charms, and he was now enjoying his conversation with his cousin none the less for the discovery that Miss Coppinger, who was younger than he, had preserved her youth very much less successfully than he had done.

The cross-examination had moved on to the subject of Larry’s religion, and the combative fervour of Major Dick’s Protestantism might have edified John Knox.

“But look here, Frederica,” he said, putting down his cup and saucer, with a crash, on the high mantelpiece, “you don’t mean to tell me that the boy has to go to Mass with the servants—­on the cook’s lap, I suppose—­on the outside car!  Good Heeavens!  Poor old Tom!  Talk about turning in his grave!  I should think he was going head over heels in it by this time!”

This referred to the late Colonel Coppinger, the genuineness of whose conversion to his wife’s Church had never been accepted by Major Talbot-Lowry.

“My dear Dick!” said Lady Isabel.

Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly with an air of high self-control.

“That is a matter of opinion!” she said blandly.  “Tom was perfectly aware of what changing his religion involved, in this country—­though it’s probably quite different in India.  In any case, the thing is done, and as I believe it to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel, to his chapel he shall go!”