The two gentlemen dismounted at the gate giving their horses to their groom, and then walked towards Lady Eleanor together. Both were dressed in blue coats, buff waistcoats, and broad-brimmed white hats, and wore riding trousers strapped very tightly over their boots. They were evidently father and son, though the elder seemed almost as young and alert as the younger. The old gentleman took off his hat, bent his grey head over Lady Eleanor's out-stretched hand, and kissed it with the old-fashioned courtesy which has now vanished. Then beckoning the younger man forward, he said:
"I bring you back an old friend with a new title, Lady Eleanor. He has just returned from India with a new scar on the right shoulder to balance the old scar on the left, and with a letter from the Commander-in-Chief, which he is too modest to show to his friends and too proud to show to his enemies, if he has any—Colonel George Fitzdenys."
And the younger man came forward, tall, lean, wiry, and erect as the Corporal himself. He wore the moustache which showed him to be a Light Dragoon, and looked every inch a soldier; but though he could not have been more than three or four and thirty, he had the sad expression of a man who has found the years long. Still bronzed and brown though his face was, he blushed just a little as he caught his father's proud glance at him, and bent in his turn over Lady Eleanor's hand.
"Welcome back, Colonel Fitzdenys," she said very quietly; "we have not lost sight of you in the Gazettes through all these years; and you are quite recovered from your wound, I hope."
"Wound! it was nothing," he said, "an arrow in the shoulder which your boy would have laughed at."
And then Lady Eleanor beckoned to the children to come up; and old Lord Fitzdenys gave Dick two fingers and Elsie one, for he said that if her hand was like her mother's it could not hold more. But Colonel George gave Dick his whole hand, and bent down to kiss Elsie's as he had kissed her mother's, which won her little heart completely.
[Illustration: Bent down to kiss Elsie's as he had kissed her mother's.]
"Now, my dear lady," said the old gentleman, "I must ask you for the favour of a few minutes' private conversation."