The Man that Maddened a Continent
form, and only just beginning to attract people like the Vincents!
Of course, we had had undesirables before, but we had chased them out very easily. They were usually simple-minded parvenus, who thought they had only to buy a house in order to tuck in socially. When they discovered they had invested their money in a mausoleum, they were as eager to go as we were to speed them, and the even tenor of our aristocratic way was not long disturbed. But the man that had maddened a continent gave us no such handle to expel him. He had come to bury himself in the great empty rooms of the Howard place, and think up fresh mind-rackers in its noble seclusion. Ostracizing him seemed rather an ineffectual weapon, and the situation, if it were to be relieved at all, plainly called for something more drastic. Anyway, Studdingham was simply boiling over with fury; and when the Vincents packed up and left, they were in the humor to tear him limb from limb.
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