The sickly scent with which she had sprinkled her letter seemed to linger on his fingers; he was carefully wiping them when Charles Trevor came into the room. He glanced up, and seeing the look of surprise on that young gentleman’s face very kindly explained to him that he disliked ambergris.

Mr Trevor offered no comment, but comprehension was writ so large upon his face that Alverstoke said:

“Just so! I know what you are thinking, Charles, and you are perfectly light: it is time I gave the fair Fanny her congé.” He sighed, “A nice bit of game, but as birdwitted as she’s avaricious.”

Again Mr Trevor offered no comment. He would have been hard put to it to have made one, for his thoughts on the delicate subject were tangled. As a moralist, he could only deplore his employer’s way of life; as one deeply imbued with chivalrous ideals, he pitied the fair Fanny; but as one who was fully aware of the extent of his lordship’s generosity towards the lady, he was obliged to own that she had no cause for complaint.

Charles Trevor, one of the younger members of a large family, owed his present position to the circumstance of his father’s having been appointed, when newly ordained, to the post of tutor and general mentor to the present Marquis’s father, accompanying him on a protracted Grand Tour. A comfortable living was not his only reward: his noble pupil remained sincerely attached to him; stood as godfather to his eldest son; and reared his own son in the vague belief that the Reverend Laurence Trevor had a claim upon his patronage.