AT MARLOW REGATTA.
Sir Mark Trevor's family mansion, as everyone knows, is in Cornwall, but, being passionately fond of the River Thames, he had bought a place down at Hurley, where he passed the summer months, and there entertained his large circle of friends. The idle, pleasant life of the river suited the baronet to perfection, and being a man fond of books and antiquities, he found the neighbourhood quite to his taste, much preferring the unpretending house at Hurley to his grand hall in Cornwall, and the pleasant vales and hills of Bucks to the wild Tors and iron-bound coasts of the west country.
Bellfield, as it was called--the name being an invention of Sir Mark's happy combination of his daughter's name and the fields which surrounded the house--was not a very large place. It had originally been a farm-house, and stood near the high road, while beyond arose the sloping hills with a fringe of trees on top, and down towards the river stretched broad fields, all yellow with waving corn.
The original portion of the house was built of flint, and Sir Mark had added to it, until the whole place looked nothing but a mass of gables covered with trelliswork and overgrown with creeping plants. But a very comfortable house it was, the favourite apartment being a kind of smoking-room which opened on to a glass porch, and beyond, a wide lawn, a gorse hedge, yellow with blossom, and a view of tall beeches and glimpses of distant hills.
The walls of the smoking-room were covered from top to bottom with cartoons from "Vanity Fair," only leaving one space where guns, daggers, swords, and other warlike instruments were displayed. Plenty of low basket-chairs, soft fur rugs, side tables with a generous profusion of pipes, tobacco, and cigarettes, and on the large table, near Sir Mark's writing desk, a spirit-stand always stood ready, together with an unlimited supply of soda and seltzer for thirsty boating parties.
There was a piano in one corner, with piles of new music, principally, it must be confessed, of the comic opera and music-hall orders, and over the piano a fox's head and brush, trophies of Miss Bell's prowess in the hunting field. Off this snuggery was the saddle-room, which the young men, and indeed not a few of the ladies used to vote "awfully jolly," in the expressive slang of to-day.
There were plenty of bedrooms, low-pitched and quaint, wide staircases with unexpected turnings and twistings, and an oak-panelled dining-room, wherein Sir Mark's guests used to wax noisy at meals, but the favourite room of the house was undoubtedly the smoking-room, and in it on this bright July morning all the guests staying at Bellfield were waiting, ready to start for the Marlow Regatta.
And a very jovial party they were. Pat Ryan, having returned from the Emerald Isle, was talking his usual nonsense to pretty Kate Lester, who was stopping at Bellfield with her uncle, a gentleman who passed most of his time asleep. He had declined to go to the regatta, and was already lying in one of the low basket chairs pretending to read the Times.
Bell was standing by Carmela, who looked pale and white as she listened to Mr. Chester's chatter, giving that brilliant youth the mistaken idea that he had made an impression. Sir Mark was moving about, from one to the other, with his grave smile, and two young ladies, arrayed in white serge dresses, with jaunty straw hats, were flirting desperately with a young Oxonian called Wellthirp, but familiarly known as Bubbles, from his effervescent flow of spirits.
"We'd better start, I'm thinking," observed Mr. Ryan to the company; "it's a mighty bad thing wasting all this beautiful morning."