t estate in Surrey, and newly-built house "of the most
desirable description," he added, shrugging his shoulders.

"And what sort of a young lady is she?"

"Oh, very desirable, too, I suppose."

"But what is she like?"

"Like? Oh, like other people," and he whistled a little, seeming
relieved when "Count Stanislas" came in, and soon after going to hunt
up Harry at the Hydriot works.

It made me uncomfortable; it was so evidently another attempt on his
mother's part to secure a rich home for him in England, and his tone
did not at all reassure me that, with his easy temper, he would not
drift into the arrangement without his heart in it. "Why should I be
so vexed about it? It might be very good for him," said I to myself.

No, his heart was not in it, for he came back with Harold, and lingered
over our fire beyond all reasonable time, talking amusing random stuff,
till he had left himself only ten minutes to ride home in to dinner.

The next day Harold and I rode over to Arked together. Dermot was the
first person we saw, disporting himself with a pug-dog at the door.
"The fates have sped you well," said he, as he helped me down from my
pony. "My mother has taken Mrs. Sandford in state to call on Mrs.
Vernon, having arranged that Viola and I should conduct the
sixty-thousand pounder to admire the tints in the beech woods. The
young ladies are putting on their hats. Will it be too far for you,
Lucy, to go with us?"

Wherewith he fraternally shouted for "Vi," who appeared all in a rosy
glow, and took me upstairs to equip me for walking, extracting from me
in the meantime the main features of the story of the bloodhound, and
trembling while she gave exulting little nods.

Then she called for Nina (were they so intimate already?) and found
that young lady in a point device walking dress, nursing the pug and
talking to Dermot, and so we set forth for the beech-woods, very soon
breaking our five into three and two. Certainly Lady Diana ought to
have viewed Dermot's attentions to the sixty-thousand pounder as
exemplary, for he engrossed her and me so entirely with the description
of Harold's victory over a buck-jumper at Boola Boola, that it was full
a quarter of an hour before she looked round to exclaim, "What is
become of Viola?" And then we would not let her wait, and in truth we
never came again upon Viola and Harold till we overtook them at the
foot of the last hill, and they never could satisfy Miss Sa