the duke." In moments of dejection this was one of Willy's commonest
thoughts. "I did my best, but I was opposed. Father doesn't care, and
as for the girls, they'll take up with any man so long as he is young.
Still, in spite of them I should have got on if I hadn't lost my nerve
and had to give up hunting; and without hunting there is no way of
making acquaintances."

Willy had relied on a hunter as Berkins had on pheasants and glass-
houses. But he hated hunting, and finding he got no further than a few
breakfasts, he had told a story of a heavy fall and sold his horses.
He had then insisted on dinner-parties, and some few people more or
less "county" had been collected; the pretext was politics, but Willy
and politics were but a doleful mixture, and the scheme collapsed. The
family was not endowed with any social qualifications, Willy least of
all, and having failed to advance himself individually, and his family
collectively, he threw up the game.

We rarely cultivate for long things in which we may not succeed in--
the lady with a small waist pinches it, the man with pretty feet wears
pretty shoes, and in no circumstances could Willy have shone in
society. He failed to interest the ladies he met on the King's Road,
he knew this; and to sum up his deficiencies, let us say he was
lacking in "go." He was too timid to succeed with the more facile
loves whom he met in the evenings on the pier. All the same he had had
his love affair.

Oh! men of inferior aspect and speech, often in you a true heart
abides; you, and you only, are faithful to the end.

To this unromantic person a shred of pure romance was attached. None