there would have been no escape for him
in any case. But now that the first little awkwardness of their meeting
was over, there was nothing else. Miss Cunyngham spoke to him quite
pleasantly and naturally--though she did not meet his eyes much.
Meantime dinner was announced, and Lord Rockminster led the way with a
trim little elderly lady whom Lionel afterwards discovered to be (for
she told him as much) the London correspondent of a famous Parisian
journal devoted to fashions and the _beau monde_.

And here he was, seated side by side with Honnor Cunyngham, talking to
her, listening to her, and with no sort of perturbation whatever. He
began to ask himself whether he had ever been in love with her--whether
he had not rather been in love with her way of life and its
surroundings. He was thinking not so much of her as her departure on the
morrow, and the scenes that lay beyond. Why had he not L10,000 a
year--L5000--nay, L1000 a year--and freedom? Why could he not warm his
soul with the consciousness that the salmon-rods were all packed and
waiting in the hall; that new casting-lines had been put in the
fly-book; that only the short drive up to Euston and a single black
night lay between him and all the wide wonder of the world that would
open out thereafter? Forth from the darkness into a whiter light--a
larger day--a sweeter air; for now we are among the russet beech-hedges,
the deep-green pines, the purple hills touched here and there with snow;
and the far-stretching landscape is shining in the morning sun; and the
peewits are wheeling hither and thither in the blue. Then we are
thundering through rocky chasms and watching the roaring brown torrent
beneath; or panting or struggling away up the lonely altitudes of
Drumouchter; and again merrily racing and chasing down into the spacious
valley of the Spey. And what for the end?--the long, still strath after
leaving Invershin--the penetration into the more secret solitudes--the
peaks of Coulmore and Suilven in the west--and here the Aivron making a
murmuring music over its golden gravel! There is a smell of peat in the
air; there are children's voices about the keepers' cottages; and here
is the handsome old Robert, rejoiced that the year has opened again and
Miss Honnor come back! "Well, Robert, you must come in and have a dram,
and I will show you the tackle I've brought with me." "I am not wishing
for a dram, Miss Honnor, so much as I am glad to see you back again, ay