id not
appear to have disappointed Mina and was certainly no ground of
complaint on her uncle's part.

Presumably Mr Sloyd's inquiries elicited satisfactory information;
perhaps Mina was not hard to please. At all events, a week later she and
the Major got out at Blentmouth station and found Sloyd himself waiting
to drive with them to Merrion Lodge; he had insisted on seeing them
installed; doubtless he was, as he put it, playing for the break again.
He sat in the landau with his back to the horses and pointed out the
features of interest on the road; his couple of days' stay in the
neighborhood seemed to have made him an old inhabitant.

"Five hundred population five years ago," he observed, waving his hand
over Blentmouth in patronizing encouragement. "Two thousand winter,
three five summer months now--largely due to William Iver, Esquire, of
Fairholme--we shall pass Fairholme directly--a wealthy gentleman who
takes great interest in the development of the town."

It was all Greek to the Major, but he nodded politely. Mina was looking
about her with keen eyes.

"That's Fairholme," Sloyd went on, as they came to a large and rather
new house situated on the skirts of Blentmouth. "Observe the
glass--those houses cost thousands of pounds--grows peaches all the
year, they tell me. At this point, Madame Zabriska, we turn and pursue
the road by the river." And so he ceased not to play guide-book till he
landed them at the door of Merrion Lodge itself, after a slow crawl of
a quarter of a mile uphill. Below them in the valley lay the little
Blent, sparkling in the sunshine of a summer afternoon, and beyond the
river, facing them on the opposite bank, no more perhaps than five
hundred yards away, was Blent Hall. Mina ran to the parapet of the
levelled terrace on which the Lodge stood, and looked down. Blent Hall
made three sides of a square of old red-brick masonry, with a tower in
the centre; it faced the river, and broad gravel-walks and broader lawns
of level close-shaven turf ran down to the water's edge.

"Among the minor seats of the nobility Blent is considered a very
perfect example," she heard Sloyd say to the Major, who was
unobtrusively but steadily urging him in the direction of the landau.
She turned to bid him good-by, and he came up to her, hat in hand.

"Thank you. I like the place," she said. "Do you--do you think we shall
make acquaintance with the people at Blent Hall?"

"Her ladyship's in poor healt