ade very welcome amidst all the women at the tea-table.
Not a word was said about Lizzie Eustace. Lady Fawn talked about
Parliament, and professed to pity a poor lover who was so bound
to his country that he could not see his mistress above once a
fortnight. "But there'll be a good time coming next month," she
said;--for it was now July. "Though the girls can't make their claims
felt, the grouse can."

"It isn't the House altogether that rules me with a rod of iron, Lady
Fawn," said Frank, "but the necessity of earning daily bread by the
sweat of my brow. A man who has to sit in court all day must take the
night,--or, indeed, any time that he can get,--to read up his cases."

"But the grouse put a stop to all work," said Lady Fawn. "My gardener
told me just now that he wanted a day or two in August. I don't doubt
but that he is going to the moors. Are you going to the moors, Mr.
Greystock?"

As it happened, Frank Greystock did not quite know whether he was
going to the moors or not. The Ayrshire grouse-shooting is not the
best in Scotland;--but there is grouse-shooting in Ayrshire; and the
shooting on the Portray mountains is not the worst shooting in the
county. The castle at Portray overhangs the sea, but there is a wild
district attached to it stretching far back inland, in regard to
which Lizzie Eustace was very proud of talking of "her shooting."
Early in the spring of the present year she had asked her cousin
Frank to accept the shooting for the coming season,--and he had
accepted it. "I shall probably be abroad," she said, "but there
is the old castle." She had offered it as though he had been her
brother, and he had said that he would go down for a couple of
weeks,--not to the castle, but to a little lodge some miles up from
the sea, of which she told him when he declined the castle. When this
invitation was given there was no engagement between her and Lord
Fawn. Since that date, within the last day or two, she had reminded
him of it. "Won't his lordship be there?" he had said laughingly.
"Certainly not," she had answered with serious earnestness. Then she
had explained that her plan of going abroad had been set aside by
circumstances. She did mean to go down to Portray. "I couldn't have
you at the castle," she said, smiling; "but even an Othello couldn't
object to a first cousin at a little cottage ever so many miles
off." It wasn't for him to suggest what objections might rise to the
brain of a modern Oth