Cynthia Welwyn was giving an account of her evening at Beechmark to her elder sister, Lady Georgina.

They had just met in the little drawing-room of Beechmark Cottage, and tea was coming in.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the two sisters presented.

They were the daughters of a peer belonging to what a well-known frequenter of great houses and great families before the war used to call "the inferior aristocracy"-- with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great families themselves.

Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian days--parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency, who had earned his final step in the peerage by the skilful management of a little war, and had then incontinently died, leaving his family his reputation, which was considerable, and his savings, which were disappointingly small.