The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-08

room, disdaining every call of sociabil- ity. She had awakened to the truth of the situation in so far as she was con- cerned. She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point of view. Her re- sentiment was not against the policy of her brother. but the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sis ter-in-law. From the beginning she had dislilled Evelyn; now she despised her. With the loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in the outrage of the morning, attributtng everything to the cruelty and envy of the despot who held the purse strings from which dangled the pliable fortunes of Bazelhurst. The Bazelhursts, one and all-ancestors thrown in-swung back and forth on the pendulum of her capriciousness. Penelope. poor as a church mouse, was almost wholly dependent upon her
 brother, who in turn owed his present
 af1uence to the more or less luckless
 movement 0f the matrimonial market.
 The girl had small, inadequate in-
 come-so small that it was almost worth testing about.
 Here was Penelope, twenty-two, beautiful, proud, fair minded and healthy, surveying herself for the first time from new and an entirely diff ferent point of view. She was not ! pleased with the, picture. She began
 to loathe herself more than she pitied her brother. Something like a smile came into her clouded face as she spec ulated on Randolph Shaw's method of handling Evelyn Banks had she fallen
 to him as wife. The quiet power in that mans face signif1ed the presence Of manhood that-ah, and just here it occurred to her that Lady Bazelhurst felt the force of that power even | though she never had seen the man.
 She hated him because he was strong enough to oppose her, to ignore her, to laugh at her impotence.
 The smoldering anger and growing sense of fairness combined at length in the determination to take her broth CT and his wife to task for the morn ing's outrage, let the consequences be what they night When she joined the people downstairs before dinner there was 8 red spot in each cheek and a duke to neglect woefully the conversa- tion he was carrying on with Mrs. Od-. 1 we'll Dinner was delayed for nearly half an hour while four of the guests fin ished their rubber" Penelope ob- served that the party displayed varying, emotions \ It afterward transpired that the hunters had spent most of the aft ernoon in her ladyships distant lodge playing bridge for rather high stakes. Little Miss Folsom was pitifully unre- sponsive to the mirth of MT. Odwell. She could i'll afford to lose $500. Lady Bazelhurst was in a frightful mood. Her guests had so far forgotten them selves as to win more than $1,O0O of the Banks legacy, and she was not a cheerful loser, especially as his lord ship had dropped an additional $500. The winners were ,riotously happy. They had found the sport glorious An observer given to deductions might have noticed that half of the diners were immoderately hilarious, the other half studiously polite.
 Lord Bazelhurst wore hunted look and drank more than one or two high balls. From time to time he cast fur tive glances at his wife. He laughed frequently at the wrong time and mirthlessly
 He's got something on his mind" whispered Odwell in comment.
 s'Yes; he always laughs when there is anything on his mind" replied Mrs. De Peyton. That's the way he gets 1t off,
 After dinner no one proposed cards. The party edged off into twos and threes and explained how luck had been with or against them. Penelope, who could not afford to play for stakes and had the courage to say so, sat back and listened to the conversation of her brother and the group around him. The duke was holding forth on the superiority of the Chinese over the Japanese as servants, and Bazelhurst was loudly defending the Japanese navy.
 "Hang it all, Barminster, the Japs could eat lem up!' he proclaimed
 Couldn't they?" to the crowd.
 "Tm talking about servants. Cecil" observed the duke.
 ..And shoot? Why, they're the great est gunners in the world. By love, I read somewhere the other day that they had hit what they shot at 5000, 900