y. He was no longer a beardless boy, to be
patronised with that gracious elder-sister air of Lady Mabel's. She
felt that he was further off from her than he had been last season in
London.

"How late you arrived this evening," she said, after a pause. "I came
to five-o'clock with my aunt, and found her quite anxious about you. If
it hadn't been for your telegram from Southampton, she would have
fancied there was something wrong."

"She needn't have fidgeted herself after three o'clock," answered Rorie
coolly; "my luggage must have come home by that time."

"I see. You sent the luggage on before, and came by a later train?"

"No, I didn't. I stopped halfway between here and Lyndhurst to see some
old friends."

"Flattering for my aunt," said Mabel. "I should have thought she was
your oldest friend."

"Of course she has the prior claim. But as I was going to hand myself
over to her bodily at seven o'clock, to be speechified about and
rendered generally ridiculous, after the manner of young men who come
of age, I felt I was entitled to do what I liked in the interval."

"And therefore you went to the Tempests'," said Mabel, with her blue
eyes sparkling. "I see. That is what you do when you do what you like."

"Precisely. I am very fond of Squire Tempest. When I first rode to
hounds it was under his wing. There's my mother beckoning me; I am to
go and do the civil to people."

And Roderick walked away from the ottoman to the spot where his mother
stood, with the Duke of Dovedale at her side, receiving her guests.

"It was a very grand party, in the way of blue blood, landed estate,
diamonds, lace, satin and velvet, and self-importance. All the magnates
of the soil, within accessible distance of Briarwood, had assembled to
do honour to Rorie's coming of ago. The dining-tables had been arranged
in a horse-shoe, so as to accommodate fifty people in a room which, in
its every-day condition, would not have been too large for thirty. The
orchids and ferns upon this horse-shoe table made the finest
floricultural show that had been seen for a long time. There were rare
specimens from New Granada and the Philippine Islands; wondrous flowers
lately discovered in the Sierra Madre; blossoms of every shape and
colour from the Cordilleras; richest varieties of hue--golden yellow,
glowing crimson, creamy white; rare eccentricities of form and colour
beside which any other flower would have looked vulgar; butterfly
flowers and p