Chapter Seventeen.
“Iris.”
One sunny afternoon in spring, Lucian Leigh was sitting on a bench in the garden at Ashfield Mount. Nearly two years had passed since he had left Cleverley in the agony of his great disappointment, and he had now come back to it for the first time.
The flowers were as gay as when he had walked among them during the brief days of his betrothal, the house looked as cheerful and comfortable as of old; the great deer-hound that sat at his feet was unchanged during his absence, but Lucian himself had grown from youth to manhood, and though the expression of his impassive, regular-featured face had changed but little, it was so effectually bronzed, that hair, and even eyes, showed light against the sunburn.
He sat still and smoked, and patted Donald’s head—he liked the feel of it—till footsteps approached, and he was hailed from the neighbouring shrubbery.
“Ha, Syl!” he said, jumping up, “so there you are. Glad to see you.”
“I’m uncommonly glad to see you,” said Sylvester, grasping his hand. “I began to think you were never coming home any more, but were permanently given over to tigers and elephants. Did you like India?”
“No,” said Lucian, “the big game is the only thing worth going there for. I’ve had a shot, I believe, at everything there is there to shoot at I know all the tracks of them, but so do so many other men. Now I think of trying bears in the Rockies for a change; and I should like to go north—an arctic expedition would be rather jolly.”
“You want to add a polar bear’s hide to all the tiger skins you have sent home to adorn the hall at Toppings, before you settle down to pot your own partridges.”