' CHAPTER XL.—At His Mekcy. While Herbert and Gerald were having their unpleasant quarter of an hour together at Oak Lodge, a scene was being enacted under another robf in Stokeville, hardly in ferior to it in dramatic interest. There had been a dinner party at the hall the previous night in which three young people had re turned from Sandford-ori-Sea on purpose to take part. Indeed it was a sort of imformal banquet in honor of Mildred's marriage with" Mr Frank Farrer, which it waff-understood, was to take place almost immediately. Mr Farrer, senior, had been present as the guest of the evening. The old Squire was not.a frequent visitor to the Hall; his politics were opposed to those of Sir Peter, and being as great a man in his way as the knight himself, their intercourse partook of the character of that of the two kings of Brentford. Mr Farrer's ancestor had come over with the Conqueror, and laid hands on certain property (belonging to other people) of which his descendants had never loosed their hold. They had stuck to the land like barnacles to a ship's bottom, a circumstance in the Squire's eyes as meritorious as the behaviour of a Casabianca. Whereas, Sir Peter, ' too proud to care from whence he came,' plumed himself on being a sort of William the Conqueror in his own person. Then, to Bet against the latter's museum, which nobody visited, Mr Farrer had built a model village, in which, since no public house was allowed within two miles of it, very few people could be induced to live. The Squire had no title, but on the other hand was a knight of the shire, and cherished the rememberance of one of his ancestors having refused a baronetcy on the ground that it could add no dignity to his social position. It was true that both the fact and the ground were disputed; but that did not prevent a sense of self-scarifice mingling with the Squire's self-importance in a man ner very agreeable to himself, and which was displayed to most advantage when, as on the present occasion, he could place his thumbs, in the armholes of his white waist coat, with his back to a drawing-room fire. 