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The fond mother’s fears of the blight which our undivided attentions might throw upon her daughters’ careers had culminated that morning. A month before an announcement in the Morning Post had spurred her to an action which her fear alone would never have conceived. It ran as follows—

“Among the passengers by the s.s. Madagascar, which sails on August 4 for her winter’s cruise around the world, will be the Earl of Denvarre. His lordship will be accompanied by his brother the Hon. Stephen Garlicke.”

This item of intelligence had caught the dutiful mother’s eye, and taken vigorous root in her somewhat languid intelligence. Two eligible young men were to be shut up for eight or nine months in a space not more than one hundred yards long by twenty wide. Walking lawlessly in London were two extremely ineligible youths, unchained, ready and willing to wreck her daughters’ happiness. Why not extract the victims from this hazardous propinquity, placing them at the same time in the financially commendable vicinitude of a live earl and his brother. Action was born only too rapidly from reflection. We had seen them off that very morning.