CHAPTER III.

HOW LADY CATHERON CAME HOME.


Late in the afternoon of a September day Sir Victor Catheron, of
Catheron Royals, brought home his wife and son.

His wife and son! The county stood astounded. And it had been a dead
secret. Dreadful! And Inez Catheron was jilted? Shocking! And _she_
was a soap-boiler's daughter? Horrible! And now when this wretched,
misguided young man could keep his folly a secret no longer, he was
bringing his wife and child home.

The resident gentry sat thunderstruck. Did he expect they could call?
(This was the gentler sex.) Plutocracy might jostle aristocracy into
the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter
of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive
there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was
very sad--very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of
insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity
cropping up. The young man must simply be mad.

Nevertheless bells rung and bonfires blazed, tenantry cheered, and all
the old servants (with Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, and Mr. Hooper,
the butler, at their head) were drawn up in formidable array to