of Jane's left hand. No, no, you do that, by
the way; and I shall have to wait until I get a wife of my own.'

'Here 's to her good health!' said Peter. And they endeavoured to be
lively, as befits the subject of weddings; but Peter was thinking that
perhaps his own wedding-day might be five years hence, and however they
might plan that it should be the same as they had first intended, it
was a long time to wait. And Toffy was wondering how long Horace Avory
meant to live, and if Carrie would mind very much his going to
Argentine, and whether she would write him one of those long
tear-blistered letters in her indistinct handwriting, which he found so
hard to read, and, suppose Horace Avory never died (as seemed quite
likely), what would be the end of it all? Also, he wondered whether
Carrie and Miss Sherard would get on well together if they were to
meet, and he hoped with manly stupidity that they might be friends.
But what he wondered more than anything else at present was whether
Kitty Sherard would allow him to go and say good-bye to her. Toffy was
feeling ill, and his vitality was low; in his weakness he thought with
an insistence that was almost homesick in its intensity how beautiful
it would be to see her in this ugly old house of his, in one of her
rose-coloured gowns, and with her brown curls and her hopelessly
baffling and bewildering manner of speech.

And each of the two young men, being absorbed in quite other subjects,
talked cheerfully of the voyage, and speculated on what sort of sport
they might incidentally get; and they discussed much more seriously the
fishing flies and guns they should take with them than the possible
finding of Peter's brother or Peter's own change of fortune.

Lydia, listening at the door before she went to bed, for no particular
reason except that her aunt had forbidden it, decided that her master
and Captain Ogilvie were planning a sporting expedition
together--'which means dullness and aunt for me for a few months to
come,' said Lydia, with a sniff.

CHAPTER X

So Peter went to London to collect his kit and to say good-bye to Jane
Erskine, and Nigel Christopherson ordered a great many new boots of
various designs, and some warlike weapons, and then there came the time
when he had to write to Mrs. Avory to say that he was going away, and
when in the solitude of his life at Hulworth he had time to sit down
and wonder what she would think about it. He was not lo