ed an excellent first impression
upon these country gentlemen who were now to be his neighbours. It was
evident that he was anxious to remove grievances. His tone as to his
employer was guarded, but not at all servile; and he made the impression
of a man of ability accustomed to business, though modestly avowing his
ignorance of rural affairs; independent, yet anxious to do his best with
a great trust.

After half an hour's discussion, Barton drew Victoria aside, and said to
her excitedly that the new agent was "a capital fellow!"

"He'll do the job, you'll see! Melrose is breaking up--thank God! Every
one who's seen him lately says he's not half the man he was. He'll have
to give this fellow a free hand. That estate has been a plague-spot!
But we'll get it cleared up now."

Victoria wondered. Secretly, she doubted the power of any man to manage
Melrose even _moriturus_.

Meanwhile it had not escaped her that the new agent and Lydia Penfold had
arrived together. It had struck her also that their manner toward each
other, as she went to meet them, had been the manner of persons just
emerged from a somewhat intimate conversation. And she already perceived
the nascent jealousy in Harry.

Well, no doubt the agent also was to be practised on by these
newfangled arts. For no girl could have had the audacity to make the
compact Lydia Penfold had made with Harry, if she were already in love
with another man! No. Faversham, it was plain, would be the next added
to her train. Victoria beheld the golden-haired creature as the modern
Circe, surrounded by troops of ex-suitors--lovers transmogrified to
Friends--docile at the heel of the sorceress. You took your chance,
received your "No," and subsided cheerfully into the pen. Victoria vowed
to herself that her Harry should do nothing of the kind!

She looked round her for the presumptuous maiden. There she was, under a
fountain wall in the Italian garden, her white dress gleaming from the
warm shadow in which the stone was steeped; Delorme, with an easel, in
front. He was making a rapid charcoal sketch of her, and she was sitting
daintily erect, talking and smiling at intervals. A little way off, a
group of people, critical observers of the proceeding, lounged on the
grass or in garden chairs; among them, Tatham. And as he sat watching the
sitting, his hat drawn forward over his brow and eyes, although he
chatted occasionally with Mrs. Manisty beside him, his mother was
misera