of his political leader, and he adored his wife. Her death was so sudden, the habit of his married life, though short, had struck so deep a root in him, that from the moment of losing her he changed inwardly, and there began to appear in him those little exaggerations of which I have spoken. The best of these was too anxious an attachment to the son who must inherit his wealth. The next best a habit of giving rather too large and unexpected sums of money to objects which rather too suddenly struck him as worthy. To these habits of mind he had added excursions into particular fields of morals. In one phase he had been a teetotaller. He escaped from this only to fall into the Anti-Foreign-Atrocities fever. He read Tolstoy for one year, and then passed from that emotion into a curious fit of land nationalisation. Finally, he settled down for good into the Anti-Gambling groove.
By the time this last spiritual adventure had befallen Mr. Brassington he was nearer fifty than forty years of age, and the detestation of games of hazard was to provide him for the rest of his life with such moral occupation as his temperament demanded.
Certain insignificant but marked idiosyncrasies in his dress accompanied this violence
