monarch. Riseholme might perhaps according to the crude materialism of
maps, be included in the kingdom of Great Britain, but in a more real
and inward sense it formed a complete kingdom of its own, and its queen
was undoubtedly Mrs Lucas, who ruled it with a secure autocracy
pleasant to contemplate at a time when thrones were toppling, and
imperial crowns whirling like dead leaves down the autumn winds. The
ruler of Riseholme, happier than he of Russia, had no need to fear the
finger of Bolshevism writing on the wall, for there was not in the
whole of that vat which seethed so pleasantly with culture, one bubble
of revolutionary ferment. Here there was neither poverty nor discontent
nor muttered menace of any upheaval: Mrs Lucas, busy and serene, worked
harder than any of her subjects, and exercised an autocratic control
over a nominal democracy.

Something of the consciousness of her sovereignty was in her mind, as
she turned the last hot corner of the road and came in sight of the
village street that constituted her kingdom. Indeed it belonged to her,
as treasure trove belongs to the Crown, for it was she who had been the
first to begin the transformation of this remote Elizabethan village
into the palace of culture that was now reared on the spot where ten
years ago an agricultural population had led bovine and unilluminated
lives in their cottages of grey stone or brick and timber. Before that,
while her husband was amassing a fortune, comfortable in amount and
respectable in origin, at the Bar, she had merely held up a small dim
lamp of culture in Onslow Gardens. But both her ambition and his had
been to bask and be busy in artistic realms of their own when the
materialistic needs were provided for by sound investments, and so when
there were the requisite thousands of pounds in secure securities she
had easily persuaded him to buy three of these cottages that stood
together in a low two-storied block. Then, by judicious removal of