is mother was
very ill, he said, but he would send his portfolio for her ladyship to
look over, if she would allow him. Her ladyship would be delighted.

When the young ladies brought Mr. Logger back to luncheon the visitors
were gone, but Lady Latimer mentioned that they had been there, and she
gave Mr. Logger a short account of them: "Mr. Harry Musgrave is reading
for the bar. He took honors at Oxford, and if his constitution will
stand the wear and tear of a laborious, intellectual life, great things
may be expected from him. But unhappily he is not very strong." Mr.
Logger shook his head, and said it was the London gas. "Mr. Christie is
a son of our village wheelwright, himself a most ingenious person. Mr.
Danberry found him out, and spoke those few words of judicious praise
that revealed the young man to himself as an artist. Mr. Danberry was
staying with me at the time, and we had him here with his sketches,
which were so promising that we encouraged him to make art his study.
And he has done so with much credit."

"Christie? a landscape-painter? does a portrait now and then? I have met
him at Danberry's," said Mr. Logger, whose vocation it was to have met
everybody who was likely to be mentioned in society. "Curious now:
Archdeacon Topham was the son of a country carpenter: headstrong
fellow--took a mountain-walk without a guide, and fell down a
_crevasse_, or something."

Mr. Cecil Burleigh arrived the next day to luncheon. In the afternoon
the whole party walked in the Forest. Lady Latimer kept Dora at her
elbow, and required Mr. Logger's opinion and advice on a new emigration
scheme that she was endeavoring to develop. Bessie Fairfax was thus left
to Mr. Cecil Burleigh, and they were not at a loss for conversation.
Bessie was feeling quite gay and happy, and talked and listened as
cheerfully as possible. The gentleman was rather jaded with the work of
the session, and showed it in his handsome visage. He assumed that Miss
Fairfax was so far in his confidence as to be interested in the high
themes that interested himself, and of these he discoursed until his
companion inadvertently betrayed that she was capable of abstracting her
mind and thinking of something else while seeming to give him all her
polite attention. He was then silent--not unthankfully.

Their walk took them first round by the wheelwright's and afterward by
the village. Lady Latimer loved to entertain and occupy her guests, even
those who w