Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family
and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would have done more--or
as much? This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have
fought it. All the people of position that he was acquainted with would
have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly. But while the
baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional education his
son had received. He, took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his
System when it was absolutely on trial. False to his son it could not be
said that he had been false to his System he was. Others saw it plainly,
but he had to learn his lesson by and by.

Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table,
saying, "Well! well!" She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and
drew forth a little book she recognized. "Ha! what is this?" she said.

"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her. "The stupid fellow
took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."

It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned over
the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.

She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with the
mouthpiece of narrower?"

"I do not agree with that," she observed. He was in no humour for
argument.

"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"

He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings. A