ant cavalier who
rode out with me?"

"Ay, but I got a roll in a duck-pond that day," said he, grimly. "You
persuaded me to let the beast drink, and he lay down in the water and
nearly squashed me."

"Oh, you almost killed me with laughter. I had to hold on by the crutch
of my saddle to save myself from falling into the pond."

"And I hear you made a sketch of me."

"Have you not seen it? I declare I thought I had shown it to you; but I
will after dinner if I can find it."

The dinner was announced at this moment, and they proceeded to the
dining-room.

"Taste is everything," said Cutbill, as he unfolded his napkin, and
surveyed the table, decked out with fruit and flowers with a degree of
artistic elegance that appealed even to _him_. "Taste is everything. I
declare to you that Howell and James would pay fifty pounds down just
for that urn as it stands there. How you twined those lilies around it
in that way is quite beyond me."

As the dinner went on, he was in ecstasy with everything.

"Don't part with your cook, even after they make a bishop of you," said
he. "I don't know the French name of that dish, but I believe it's a
stewed hare. Might I send my plate twice?"

"Mr. Cutbill saw the Bramleighs at Como, Julia," said L'Estrange, to
take him, if possible, off the subject of the entertainment.

"I did, indeed. I met them at that very hotel that was once Queen
Caroline's house. There they were diverting themselves,--boating and
going about just as if the world had gone all right with them; and
Bramleigh told me one morning that he had cashed the last check for
fifty pounds."

"And is he really determined to touch nothing of his property till the
law assures him that his right is undeniable?"

"Worse than that, far worse; he has quarrelled with old Sedley, his
father's law-agent for forty years, and threatened him with an action
for having entered into a compromise without instructions or permission;
and he is wrong, clearly wrong, for I saw the correspondence, and if it
goes before a jury, they 'll say at once that there was consent."

"Had he then forgotten it?" asked Julia.

"No, he neither forgets nor remembers; but he has a sort of flighty way
of getting himself into a white heat of enthusiasm; and though he cools
down occasionally into a little common sense, it does n't last; he
rushes back into his heroics, and raves about saving him from himself,
rescuing him from the ignoble temptation of sel