Goring agreed to this. The colonel readily granted a few weeks' leave to both, as the spring drills were a long way off, or the alternate mud and dust of the Long Valley were not sufficiently deep for military manœuvres; and they started for Wilmothurst, which was situated in one of the prettiest and most wooded parts of Hampshire, Goring being glad of anything that drew him from his own thoughts and aided him to kill the harassing time.

Jerry's man secured their seats and saw their luggage duly placed in the van.

'Now, O'Farrel,' said he, as the latter saluted and retired, 'don't get drunk at the "Tumble-down-Dick," or you'll never be the Sultan of Turkey.'

Farnborough Station was soon left far behind; Fleet, with its pond and moorlands; Winchfield, Basingstoke, with its market and town-hall. The carriage from Wilmothurst met them at a station some miles eastward of Salisbury, and the short winter evening saw them deposited at the porte-cochère of the stately modern mansion, which occupied the site of an ancient one, and of which Jerry was the lord and owner.

'A fine place this, Jerry,' exclaimed Goring as they alighted; 'the grounds are beautiful.'

'Yes, but the devil of it is that the lands are mortgaged, I believe, to an awful extent; my father was a man of expensive habits and tastes. The old lady ma mère hopes, nay, never doubts, that I shall, with my handsome figure and rare accomplishments, pick up an heiress, as if such prizes were to be found like pips on every hedge; but I have my own fancy to consult in the matter of marriage.'

And Jerry laughed softly as he looked at his watch and added,

'Now to dress for dinner, and then I shall introduce you to the ladies in the drawing-room.'

Jerry had, during the last few weeks, especially since his fancy for Mrs. Trelawney had been cooled by her laughing repulse of his suit, gone much after Bella Chevenix, a former flame, wherever he had met her—a young lady of whom we shall have much to tell anon—but, as yet, he had given no token of his actual feelings towards her, save a rather marked attention, which she—knowing the views, the necessities, and, more than all, the general bearing of Lady Julia Wilmot towards herself—had never in any way encouraged.

Goring followed up the stately, richly-carpeted, and warmly-lighted staircase the valet, who conducted him to his room, where he found his clothes already unpacked, his evening costume placed on a clothes-rail before a blazing fire, and, as he turned to the great mirror and magnificent toilette table, he thought, with a repining sigh, if something like these luxurious surroundings of which Jerry made so light were his, how different might be the fate or fortune of his engagement with Alison Cheyne.