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She did not wish to separate the boys, and realising that it was impossible to send them together to an ordinary preparatory school, the notion had come to her of asking the Considines if they would take them into their house at Lapton.

Payne had the good luck to stumble on Considine's advertisement for, in spite of the strange complications that ensued for the Considines the occasion was certainly fortunate for her that remarkable person was at her wits' ends.

While the Rectory at Lapton was having its roof repaired, its walls painted, and the fungus that grew in the cupboards of old Canon Harrow's bedroom removed, the Considines were housed at Halberton and instructed in the family tradition. In the case of Dr.

In six weeks the Rectory had been vacated and relet to an old lady from the north of England who wanted to die in Devonshire, and the Considines had moved to the Manor, under the benignant eyes of Lady Halberton.

They were like the Count Considines and the Irish gentlemen in Lever's novels." "And was that all?" I asked. "No, not quite. After the colonel ceased to criticize my views of the duel, he again informed me that his own friends would call upon me to withdraw my injurious language. Then these two peacemakers departed. Now what do you think of my comedy?"

Harrow had been bundled out, the establishment of the Considines became a game as entertaining to Lady Halberton in the sphere of religious culture, as chemical experiments were to her husband in that of root-crops with the delightful difference that human souls ran away with much less money than mangolds.

Her elation was not without misgiving, for the news of the miracle was almost too good to be true; she couldn't help feeling that the Considines had judged him with a scrutiny more superficial than her own, and though it was not for her to dispute the intellectual blossoming that had raised such hopes in his master, she couldn't be sure about the deeper, moral change until she had seen for herself.

They stayed for a quarter of an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by inviting the Considines to lunch.

She arrived there late on a Saturday night to the astonishment of the Considines, who had disposed of the boys for the evening, and were sitting together in the library.

It was a bitter thing to realise, but it made her more than ever certain that there was a secret to be disclosed. After breakfast the Sunday morning routine of a country house began. She and Arthur walked together over the fields to church. The whole country breathed a lazy atmosphere of early summer. Its beauty and its placidity mocked her. Before them went the Considines.