Mrs. Lashmar paid no heed to. him.  With a resentful countenance, she had pushed the letters aside, and was beginning her meal.  Amid all the so-called duties which she imposed upon herself—­for, in her own way, she bore the burden of the world no less than did the Rev. Philip—­Mrs. Lashmar never lost sight of one great preoccupation, the interests of her son.  He, Dyce Lashmar, only child of the house, now twenty-seven years old, lived in London, and partly supported himself as a private tutor.  The obscurity of this existence, so painful a contrast to the hopes his parents had nourished, so disappointing an outcome of all the thought that had been given to Dyce’s education, and of the not inconsiderable sums spent upon it, fretted Mrs. Lashmar to the soul; at times she turned in anger against the young man himself, accusing him of ungrateful supineness, but more often eased her injured feelings by accusation of all such persons as, by any possibility, might have aided Dyce to a career.  One of these was Lady Susan Harrop, a very remote relative of hers.  Twice or thrice a year, for half-a-dozen years at least, Mrs. Lashmar had urged upon Lady Susan the claims of her son to social countenance and more practical forms of advancement; hitherto with no result—­save, indeed, that Dyce dined once every season at the Harrops’ table.  The subject was painful to Mr. Lashmar also, but it affected him in a different way, and he had long ceased to speak of it.

“That selfish, frivolous woman!” sounded presently from behind the coffee-service, not now in accents of wrath, but as the deliberate utterance of cold judgment.  “Never in all her life has she thought of anyone but herself.  What right has such a being to bring children into the world?  What can be expected of them but meanness and hypocrisy?”

Mr. Lashmar smiled.  He had just broken an imperfect tooth upon a piece of toast, and, as usual when irritated, his temper became ironic.

“Sweet are the uses of disappointment,” he observed.  “How it clears one’s vision!”

“Do you suppose I ever had any better opinion of Lady Susan?” exclaimed his wife.

It was a principle of Mr. Lashmar’s never to argue with a woman.  Sadly smiling, he rose from the table.

“Here’s an article you ought to read,” he said, holding out the weekly paper.  “It’s fall of truth, well expressed.  It may even have some bearing on this question.”

The vicar went about his long day’s work, and took with him many uneasy reflections.  He bad not thought of it before breakfast, but now it struck him that much in that pungent article on the men of to-day might perchance apply to the character and conduct of his own son.  “A habit of facile enthusiasm, not perhaps altogether insincere, but totally without moral value . . . convictions assumed at will, as a matter of fashion, or else of singularity . . . the lack of stable purpose, save only in matters of gross