o. _Que voulez-vous?_ You talk the French, _mon baron?_"

"With a Frenchman, my lord; but not when I have the honour to speak with
an Englishman."

"Ah, there Foreign again! My lord, you will never speak English."

De Wichehalse could never be quite sure, though his race had been long
in this country, whether he or they could speak born English as it ought
to be.

"Perhaps you will find," he said at last, with grief as well as
courtesy, "many who speak one language Striving to silence one another."

"He fights best who fights the longest You will come with us, my lord?"

"Not a foot, not half an inch," the baron answered sturdily. "I've
a-laboured hard to zee my best, and 'a can't zee head nor tail to it."

Thus he spoke in imitation of what his leading tenant said, smiling
brightly at himself, but sadly at his subject.

"Even so!" the young man answered; "I will forth and pay my duty. The
rusty-weathercock, my lord, is often too late for the oiling."

With this conceit he left De Wichehalse, and, while his grooms were
making ready, sauntered down the zigzag path, which, through rocks and
stubbed oaks, made toward the rugged headland known, far up-and down
the Channel, by the name of Duty Point. Near the end of this walk there
lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all of Nature's
art secluded. The ledge that wound along the rock-front widened, and
the rock fell back and left a little cove, retiring into moss and ferny
shade. Here the maid was well accustomed every day to sit and think,
gazing down at the calm, gray sea, and filled with rich content and deep
capacity of dreaming.

Here she was, at the present moment, resting in her pure love-dream,
believing all the world as good, and true, and kind as her own young
self. Round her all was calm and lovely; and the soft brown hand of
autumn, with the sun's approval, tempered every mellow mood of leaves.

Aubyn Auberley was not of a sentimental cast of mind. He liked the poets
of the day, whenever he deigned to read them; nor was he at all above
accepting the dedication of a book. But it was not the fashion now--as
had been in the noble time of Watson, Raleigh, and Shakspere--for men to
look around and love the greater things they grow among.

Frida was surprised to see her dainty lord so early. She came here in
the morning always, when it did not rain too hard, to let her mind have
pasture on the landscape of sweet memory. And even sweeter h