could
do better for herself. Mr. Mayne pooh-poohed the whole thing so
entirely that the women could only speak of it among themselves.

"Dick is a clever fellow; he ought to marry money," he would say. "I
am not a millionaire, and a little more would be acceptable;" and
though he was always kind to Nan and her sisters, he was forever
dealing sly hits at her. "Phillis has the brains of the family," he
would say: "that is the girl for my money. I call her a vast deal
better looking than Nan, though people make such a fuss about the
other one;" a speech he was never tired of repeating in his son's
presence, and at which Dick snapped his fingers metaphorically and
said nothing.

When Dick wished that one of them were going to Switzerland, Nan
sighed furtively. Dick was going away for three months, for the
remainder of the long vacation. After next week they would not see him
until Christmas,--nearly six months. A sense of dreariness, as new as
it was strange, swept momentarily over Nan as she pondered this. The
summer months would be grievously clouded. Dick had been the moving
spirit of all the fun; the tennis-parties, the pleasant dawdling
afternoons, would lose their zest when he was away.

She remembered how persistently he had haunted their footsteps. When
they paid visits to the Manor House, or Gardenhurst, or Fitzroy Lodge,
Dick was sure to put in an appearance. People had nicknamed him the
"Challoners' Squire;" but now Nan must go squireless for the rest of
the summer, unless she took compassion on Stanley Parker, or that
dreadful chatterbox his cousin.

The male population was somewhat sparse at Oldfield. There were a few
Eton boys, and one or two in that delightful transition age when youth
is most bashful and uninteresting,--a sort of unfledged manhood, when
the smooth boyish cheek contradicts the deepened bass of the
voice,--an age that has not ceased to blush, and which is full of
aggravating idosyncrasies and unexpected angles.

To be sure, Lord Fitzroy was a splendid specimen of a young guardsman,
but he had lately taken to himself a wife; and Sir Alfred Mostyn, who
was also somewhat attractive and a very pleasant fellow, and
unattached at present, had a tiresome habit of rushing off to Norway,
or St. Petersburg, or Niagara, or the Rocky Mountains, for what he
termed sport, or a lark.

"It seems we are very stupid this evening," observed Phillis for Dick
had waxed almost as silent as Nan. "I think the