the assembled Devitts were speaking in the interval between tea and
dinner on a warm July day. Before setting this down, however, it
should be said that the chief concern of the Devitts (excepting
Harold) was to escape from the social orbit of successful
industrialism, in which they moved, to the exalted spheres of county
society.

Their efforts, so far, had only taken them to certain halfway houses
on their road. The families of consequence about Melkbridge were
old-fashioned, conservative folk, who resented the intrusion in
their midst of those they considered beneath them.

Whenever Montague, a borough magistrate, met the buffers of the
great families upon the bench, or in the hunting field, he found
them civil enough; but their young men would have little to do with
Lowther, while its womenfolk ignored the assiduities of the Devitt
females.

The drawing-room in which the conversation took place was a large,
over-furnished room, in which a conspicuous object was a picture,
most of which, the lower part, was hidden by padlocked shutters; the
portion which showed was the full face of a beautiful girl.

The picture was an "Etty," taken in part payment of a debt by
Montague's father, but, as it portrayed a nude woman, the old
Puritan had employed a Melkbridge carpenter to conceal that portion
of the figure which the artist had omitted to drape. Montague would
have had the shutters removed, but had been prevailed upon by his
wife to allow them to remain until Victoria was married, an event
which, at present, she had no justification for anticipating.