The obscurity of this existence, so painful a contrast to the hopes his parents had nourished, so disappointing an outcome of all the thought that had been given to Dyce's education, and of the not inconsiderable sums spent upon it, fretted Mrs.Lashmar to the soul; at times she turned in anger against the young man himself, accusing him of ungrateful supineness, but more often eased her injured feelings by accusation of all such persons as, by any possibility, might have aided Dyce to a career.

One of these was Lady Susan Harrop, a very remote relative of hers.

Twice or thrice a year, for half-a-dozen years at least, Mrs.Lashmar had urged upon Lady Susan the claims of her son to social countenance and more practical forms of advancement; hitherto with no result--save, indeed, that Dyce dined once every season at the Harrops' table.

The subject was painful to Mr.Lashmar also, but it affected him in a different way, and he had long ceased to speak of it.
"That selfish, frivolous woman!" sounded presently from behind the coffee-service, not now in accents of wrath, but as the deliberate utterance of cold judgment.

"Never in all her life has she thought of anyone but herself.