“You mustn’t start a Society for the Abolition of Ancestors, Miss Ranken.  We have to make up all lost ground, and we can’t help it.  I’m sorry almost that I take it all so seriously.  I feel so very much like a middle-aged prig.  Perhaps, Miss Dearsley, we may grow more cheerful when your uncle and I (and you) are fairly at work and clear of brooding.  At present I seem to exude lectures and serious precepts.”

“You go to Yarmouth after the meeting, Mr. Ferrier?”

“Yes; we must all of us copy you, and humour your uncle.  I can see he feels time going very fast, and I shall play at being in a hurry all the time I am looking after the new vessels.”

“My uncle says I must speak to our meeting.”

“Why not?  If you like, I can bring some good lady orators to keep you in countenance.”

“I shall consider.  I don’t think we ought to talk; but we cannot afford to neglect any fancy of uncle’s.”

Ferrier never heard so queer a speech from a girl before.  She had evidently made up her mind to face an ordeal which would stagger the nerves of the “young person” of the drawing-room; and her deliberate acceptance of a strained and unnatural situation pleased him.  He thought, “If she ever does take to the platform, the capture of the millionaires is sure to begin.”

Cassall and Fullerton looked very solemn and satisfied during the evening, and both of them were just a little tiresome in recurring to their new and exhaustless topic.

The old man was off to Yarmouth long before his guests were astir, for a fever of haste was upon him.  He returned in the evening, and until Saturday he was employed with his beautiful secretary in making the most lordly preparations for the great meeting—­the first of the series which was to revolutionize rich people’s conceptions of duty and necessity.

A very brilliant company assembled; the old man was an artist in his way, and he had spread his lures with consummate tact.  How on earth he got hold of eminent pressmen, I cannot tell; but then, eminent pressmen, like the rest of our world, are distinctly susceptible to the blandishments of amiable millionaires.  Sir John Rooby, the ex-Lord Mayor, appeared in apoplectic importance; Lady Glendower, who had expended a fortune on the conversion of the Siamese, also waited with acute curiosity; every name on every card there was known more or less to Secretaries, to Missionary Societies, to begging-letter writers—­to all the people who run on the track of wealth.  The great saloon, which reached from the front, right across the mansion to the windows that overlooked the park, was filled fairly; and Ferrier was not a little perturbed by the sight of his audience.