Captain Paget paid Mrs.Sheldon flowery compliments, and told her delightful stories of the aristocracy and all that shining West-end world with which he had once been familiar.

Poor simple Georgy regarded him with that reverential awe which a middle-class country-bred woman is prone to feel for a man who bears upon him that ineffaceable stamp of high birth and good breeding, not to be destroyed by half a century of degradation.

Nor could Charlotte withhold her admiration from the man whose tone was so infinitely superior to that of all the other men she had encountered.

In his darkest hour Captain Paget had found his best friends, or his easiest dupes, among women.

It had gone hard with him when his dear friend had withheld the temporary accommodation of a five-pound note; but it had been much harder when his friend's wife had refused the loan of "a little silver." Valentine Hawkehurst came very often to the Lawn, sometimes with his friend and patron, sometimes alone.