— II —A REMONSTRANCE
There’s a present for you, sir! Yes, thanks to her thrift,
My pet has been able to buy me a gift.
—London Lyrics
Ronald Campion had indeed succeeded in winning Mrs. Staniland’s niece Sybil, but the elder lady had not as yet been consulted, and it was by no means likely that the engagement would meet with her approval. It is true that Ronald was a protégé of hers: she had rescued him from his uncongenial duties as a bank clerk, and enabled him to follow the art he loved; and now that he was beginning to he known as a painter of decided promise she could reflect with some complacency that she had discovered him. But the discoverer of a new country does not invariably feel called upon to live in it, and Mrs. Staniland had always maintained a certain social distance in
