At the end, he was leaning forward, his hands grasping his ankles, and his head nearly between his knees; and so he remained for a minute when Dyce had ceased.
"I like that!" he exclaimed at length, the smile of boyish pleasure sunny upon his face.

"There's something satisfying about it.

It sounds helpful." Help amid the confusing problems of life was what Lord Dymchurch continually sought.

In his private relations one of the most blameless of men, he bore about with him a troubled conscience, for he felt that he was living to himself alone, whereas, as a man, and still more as member of a privileged order, he should have been justifying his existence and his position by some useful effort.

At three and twenty he had succeeded to the title--and to very little else; the family had long been in decline; a Lord Dymchurch who died in the early part of the nineteenth century practically completed the ruin of his house by an attempt to form a Utopia in Canada, and since then a rapid succession of ineffectual peers, _fruges consumere nati_, had steadily reduced the dignity of the name.