a favourite; for Godfrey there would be horses and dogcarts
at command, keepers and beaters in the shooting season, (when such
visits annually took place), and elaborate luncheons and dinners. "We
don't do much in the way of entertaining, you know," the general would
explain casually, having delivered himself on the subject to Sue,
beforehand--("Hang it all, he can't expect _that_--but he shall have
everything else, everything that we can do for him ourselves")--"We
don't go in for that sort of thing, except now and again,--but after
all, a family gathering is more agreeable to us all, I take it, eh,
Godfrey? _That's_ what you and Leo come for, not to be bothered by a
parcel of strangers you know nothing about?"

But if strangers, _i.e._, old neighbours whom Leo remembered from her
youth up, and whom she would have liked very well to meet again, if
these did accidentally cross the path of the Bolderos and their guests,
nothing could be handsomer than the way in which Godfrey Stubbs was
presented by his father-in-law. Godfrey would tell his wife about his
meeting with Lord Merivale or Sir Thomas Butts with an air of elation.
"Nice fellows; so chatty and affable." Once he let fall the latter word
in public, and nobody winced openly,--so that Leo, who had often heard
it in her married home, and never dreamed of thinking it odd, listened
and smiled in all innocence.

It must be remembered that she had barely emerged from the schoolroom
when Godfrey Stubbs carried her off as his bride, and that when the last
blow fell, and there was a sudden demand on the forlorn little creature
for qualities she either did not possess or was not conscious of
possessing, she only felt with a kind of numb misery that it was all
strange and terrible, and that if Godfrey had been there to help
her--and a burst of tears would follow.

But at least she was going home; she had never yet got quite over the
feeling that Boldero Abbey was "home," and always spoke of it as such,
even in the days when her stay there was limited to visits. How much
more then now--now, when she had no foothold anywhere else, and when the
past three years took in the retrospect the shadowy outlines of a dream.

It was odd how distinctly behind the dream stood out the days of
childhood. As the train bore her swiftly through the open country she
knew so well, on the mellow, misty October afternoon, which came at
last, Leonore's throbbing bosom was a jumble of emotions,