things I want to do--and not
the things I must do," laughed Faversham. "That seems to me the dividing
line in life--whether you are under another man's orders or your own. And
broadly speaking it's the line between poverty and money. But you don't
know much about it, old fellow!" He looked round with a laugh.

Tatham screwed up his blue eyes, not finding reply very easy, and not
certain that he liked the "old fellow," though their college familiarity
justified it. He changed the subject, and they fell into some gossip
about Oxford acquaintances and recollections, which kept the conversation
going.

But at the end of it the two men were each secretly conscious that
the other jarred upon him; and in spite of the tacit appeal made by
Faversham's physical weakness and evident depression to Tatham's
boundless good-nature, there had arisen between them at the end an
incipient antagonism which a touch might develop. Faversham appeared to
the younger man as querulous, discontented, and rather sordidly
ambitious; while the smiling optimism of a youth on whom Fortune had
showered every conceivable gift--money, position, and influence--without
the smallest effort on his own part, rang false or foolish in the ears of
his companion. Tatham, cut off from the county, agricultural, or sporting
subjects in which he was most at home, fumbled a good deal in his efforts
to adjust himself; while Faversham found it no use to talk of travel,
art, or music to one who, in spite of an artistic and literary mother and
wonderful possessions, had himself neither literary nor artistic faculty,
and in the prevailing manner of the English country gentleman, had always
found the pleasures of England so many and superior that there was no
need whatever to cross the Channel in pursuit of others. Both were soon
bored; and Tatham would have hurried his departure, but for the hope
of Lydia. With that to fortify him, however, he sat on.

And at last she came. Mrs. Penfold, it will easily be imagined, entered
upon the scene, in a state of bewildered ravishment.

"She had never expected--she could not have believed--it was like a
fairy-tale--a _real_ fairy-tale--wasn't the house _too_ beautiful--Mr.
Melrose's _taste_!--and such _things_!" In the wake of this soft,
gesticulating whirlwind, followed Lydia, waiting patiently with her
bright and humorous look till her mother should give her the chance of a
word. Her gray dress, and white hat, her little white