man! Like her! of course I do;
she's a downright good sort!"

And if Sir John was slightly shocked at the irreverence of alluding to so
perfect and pure a woman as his adored Vera by so familiar a phrase as "a
good sort," he was, at all events, too pleased by Maurice's genuine
approval of her to find any fault with his method of expressing it.

CHAPTER XI.

AN IDLE MORNING.

We loved, sir; used to meet;
How sad, and bad, and mad it was;
But then, how it was sweet!

Browning.

Leaning against a window-frame at the end of a long corridor on the
second floor, and idly looking out over the view of the wide lawns and
empty flower-beds which it commands, stands Mr. Herbert Pryme, on the
second morning after his arrival at Shadonake House.

It is after breakfast, and most of the gentlemen of the house have
dispersed; that is to say, Mr. Miller has gone off to survey his new
pigsties, and his sons and a Mr. Nethercliff, who arrived last night,
have ridden to a meet some fifteen miles distant, which the ladies had
voted to be too far off to attend.

Mr. Pryme, however, is evidently not a keen sports-man; he has declined
the offer of a mount which Guy Miller has hospitably pressed upon him,
and he has also declined to avail himself of his host's offer of the
services of the gamekeeper. Curiously enough, another guest at Shadonake,
whose zeal for hunting has never yet been impeached, has followed his
example.

"What on earth do they meet at Fretly for!" Maurice Kynaston had
exclaimed last night to young Guy, as the morrow's plans had been
discussed in the smoking-room; "it's the worst country I ever was in, all
plough and woodlands, and never a fox to be found. Your uncle ought to
know better than to go there. I certainly shan't take the trouble to get
up early to go to that place."

"Not go?" repeated Guy, aghast; "you don't mean to say you won't go,
Kynaston?"

"That's just what I do mean, though."

"What the deuce will you do with yourself all day?"

"Lie in bed," answered Maurice, between the puffs of his pipe; "we've
had a precious hard day's shooting to-day, and I mean to take it easy
to-morrow."

And Captain Kynaston was as good as his word. He did not appear in the
breakfast-room the next morning until the men who were bound for Fretly
had all ridden off and were well out of sight of the house. What he had
stayed for he would have been somewhat puzzled to explain. He was not the
kind o