“Of course she has moved only in the best circles; her mother being dead, she has been introduced by the Countess of Gayfeather, and goes with her ladyship everywhere.  Just imagine, she has been to State-balls at the Palace; the Prince has danced with her, and she has been spoken to by the Princess!  You know how I enjoy hearing all the news of the great world, and Miss Fanshawe has been so obliging as to amuse me for hours with descriptions of all she has seen and heard—­not a little, I assure you; she is not one of those flighty girls who have no ears but for flattery, no eyes but for young men; she is observant, critical perhaps, but strikingly just in her strictures on what goes on around.  I find she has thought out several of the complex problems of our modern high-pressure life; and really she gave me very valuable ideas upon my favourite theory of ‘lady-helps,’ to which I am devoting now so much of my spare time.

“Miss Fanshawe has promised to pay me a long visit at Purlington some day soon—­a real act of kindness which I fully appreciate.  It will indeed be a treat to a lonely old woman to find so entertaining a guest and companion.

“When do you think of returning?  Gollop tells me there are plenty of pheasants this year.  Surely, you have had enough of those dry German savants and that dull university-town?”

The hook was rather coarsely baited; it would hardly have deceived the most guileless and unsuspecting.  Harold Purling at a glance could read between the lines; he could trace effect to cause, and readily understood why his mother was so anxious for his return.

“One of Lady Gayfeather’s girls, is she?  I never thought much of that lot.  However—­but why on earth should Lady Calverly take my dear mother up in this way, at the eleventh hour?”

He would have wondered yet more if he had seen how cordially Mrs. Purling had been welcomed to Compton Revel.

“It is so good of you to come to us,” Lady Calverly said, with effusion.  “We are so glad to have you here, and have looked forward to it for so long.”

For about seventeen years, in fact, during which time Lord and Lady Calverly had completely ignored the existence of their near neighbour, Mrs. Purling.  Compton Revel might have been a paradise, and the heiress an exiled peri waiting at the gates.

The party assembled was after Mrs. Purling’s own heart.  They were all great people, at least in name; and the heiress of the Purlings was heard to murmur that she did like to be in such good society—­she felt so perfectly at home.  And they all made much of her.  One night she was handed in to dinner by a Duke, another by an ex-Cabinet Minister.  The latter made her feel proud, for the first time in her life, of her son, and the line he had adopted so sorely against her will.

“Mr. Purling’s paper on toxicology,” he said, “is quite the cleverest thing that has appeared on the subject.  My friend, Sir William—­,” he mentioned a physician of world-wide repute, “considers that Mr. Purling will go far.”