MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF

"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1883.

All rights reserved.

Contents

Chap.

I. [Out with the Royal Buckhounds]
II. [At Chilcote]
III. [Ellon's Ring]
IV. [Laura Trelawney]
V. [Alison's Luncheon Party]
VI. ['The Old, Old Story']
VII. [Jerry and the Widow]
VIII. ['For Ever and for Ever']
IX. [A Reprieve for a Time]
X. [ Dalton]
XI. [A Written Proposal]
XII. [In St. Clement's Lane]
XIII. [An Enigma]
XIV. ['Something as About to Happen!']
XV. [Evil Tidings]
XVI. [Cadbury's Plan or Plot]
XVII. [More Mystery]
XVIII. [Wilmothurst]
XIX. [Mr. Chevenix's Business]
XX. [The Firefly]

MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT.

CHAPTER I.
OUT WITH THE ROYAL BUCKHOUNDS.

'And your name is Alison,' said the young man, looking tenderly in the girl's eyes of soft grey-blue, that long, dark lashes shaded. 'Yet I hear some of your friends call you Lisette.'

'It is, I believe, the same thing—an old Scoto-French name, long peculiar to our family—the Cheynes of Essilmont—as papa would say if he were here,' she added, with a soft smile. Then after a pause she asked, 'How did you learn, Captain Goring, that it was Alison?'

'By looking in Debrett after I first had the pleasure' (he had well-nigh said the joy) 'of meeting you at the General's garden-party in Aldershot.'

This simple avowal of an interest in her (but it might only be curiosity) caused the girl to colour a little and nervously re-adjust her reins, though her horse, pretty well blown after a long run, was now going at an easy walk, pace by pace, with the larger and stronger bay hunter of her companion, and she glanced shyly at him as he rode by her side, for Bevil Goring, in his perfect hunting costume—his coat, buckskins, and boots, his splendid strength and engaging debonair expression of face, his soldierly set up, born of infantry service in India—was all that might please a woman's eye, however critical; and he in his turn felt that every pulse in his frame would long beat to the slight incidents of that day's glorious scamper together on horseback.

Gathered into a tight coil under her smart riding hat and dark blue veil, Alison Cheyne's hair was of that bright and rare tint when the brown seems to blend with or melt into amber, and these into a warmer tint still in the sunshine, and with which there is generally a pure and dazzling complexion.

'It was so kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Miss Cheyne, after a pause, 'to invite down papa to dine at your mess at Aldershot.'

'Not at all. Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and all the other fellows were most glad to see the old gentleman. I only fear that he thought us rather a noisy lot.'

'It delighted him—we live but a dull life at Chilcote.'

'And you have had two brothers in the service, Mrs. Trelawney told me?' resumed Goring, by no means anxious to let the conversation drop, or his companion begin to think of friends who might be looking for her.

'Yes—two, much older than I, however—poor Ranald and golden-haired Ellon.'

'What a curious name!'

'It is a place in Aberdeenshire where much of papa's property once lay. Ranald died of fever, and was buried in the lonely jungle near the Jumna.'

'Illness there does its work quickly—four and twenty hours will see the beginning and the end, and the green turf covering all. I have seen much of it in my time, Miss Cheyne—often buried the dead with my own hands, by Jove!'

'How sad to die as my poor brother did—so far away,' said the girl, her soft voice breaking a little. 'We have a saying in Scotland, "May you die among your kindred."'

'In the service one's comrades become one's kindred—we are all brother soldiers.'

'Ellon was thrown from his horse near Lahore, and impaled on his own sword, and so—and so—poor papa has now only me! I don't think he has ever got fairly over Ellon's death, as it left the baronetcy without an heir. But let me not think of these things.'

'I remember the unfortunate event of Ellon Cheyne's death,' exclaimed Goring, the colour gathering in his bronzed cheek. 'It occurred just close by the Cabul road, the day after we marched in from Umritsur; and, strange to say, I commanded the firing party at the poor fellow's funeral, on a day when the sky was like molten brass, and the wind swept past us hot and stifling like the blast from an open furnace.'

'You?' said Miss Cheyne, her eyes dilating as she spoke.

'Yes; my voice gave the orders for the three funeral volleys.'

'How strange—and now I meet you here!'

'The world is a small place now-a-days.'

Her eyes were full of a tender interest now, that made the heart of her companion thrill; nor did hers do so the less that this event caused a bond of sympathy—a subject in common between them.

A sad expression stole over the features of Alison Cheyne, and so regular were these, that with the fine outline of her profile they might have been deemed insipid, but for the variable expression of her very lovely eyes and sensitive mouth; and now, when flushed with the exercise of fast riding, the excitement of following the hounds amid such a stirring concourse, and over such an open country, they seemed absolutely beautiful.

Attracted by each other's society, she and the Captain were now somewhat apart from all the field, and the brilliant hunt was waxing to its close.

The day was a bright and clear one early in October, the regular opening day of the regular season with the Royal Buckhounds. The country wore the aspect of the month; swine were rooting in the desolate cornfield, eliciting the malediction of many a huntsman as he tore over the black and rotting stubble; geese were coming draggled and dirty out of the muddy ponds and brooks; the hedges looked naked and cold, and the blackened bean sheaves that had never ripened were rotting in the ground. An earthy odour came from the water-flags, and every hoof-print was speedily filled with the black ooze of the saturated soil the moment it was made; but the sky was clear, if not quite cloudless, and the sunshine bright as one could wish.

The time-honoured meet had duly taken place at the old village of Salthill, the scene of that tomfoolery called the Eton Montem, till its suppression in 1848; and we need scarcely inform the reader that a certain sum is devoted annually to maintain the stables, kennels, and establishment of the Royal Buckhounds, and that with each change of Ministry the post of their master is an object of keen competition among sport-loving nobles; but the opening meet is said to be seldom a favourite one with lovers of hard riding.

There is always a vast 'field,' and every one who 'by hook or crook' can procure a mount is there. Salthill thus becomes an animated and pleasant spectacle to the mere spectator, while it is a source of unmixed excitement to all who go to hunt—perhaps some five hundred horsemen or so, all anxious to be first in the chase, and jostling, spurring, and struggling to be so.

All know what a scene Paddington Station presents a short time previous to the meet, when the Metropolitan corps of huntsmen begin to muster in strong force, and well-known faces are seen on every hand—staunch followers of 'the Queen's'—going down by special train, the present holder of the horn being the observed of all; and the train, with a long line of dark horse-boxes starting with sixty or seventy noble horses for Slough, whence, after an eighteen miles' run, the long cavalcade of horsemen and people on foot pours on to Salthill, huntsmen and whips bright in brilliant new costumes of scarlet laced with gold, their horses with skins like satin, and the hounds the perfection of their breed.

There may be seen young guardsmen from Windsor, cavalry men from Aldershot, which is about twenty miles distant, in spotless black and white, side by side with old fellows in tarnished pink with the old jockey-cap, horse-dealers in corduroys and perhaps blucher boots; city men, and apparently all manner of men, and here and there a lady such as only may be seen in the Row, perfect in her mount, equipment, and costume.

On the adjacent road a lady's pretty little victoria may be jammed between a crowded four in hand and a still more crowded costermonger's cart; and so the confusion goes on till some well-known deer is quietly taken away to the front; and punctually to time the master gives the order to advance, when the huntsmen and hounds scurry into an open field, where the yeomen prickers in their Lincoln green costumes have uncarted the quarry.

Anon the line is formed, and away over the open country stream the hounds like a living tide, with red tongues out, and steam, issuing from their quivering nostrils, and all follow at headlong speed.

Here it was that Alison Cheyne, Bevil Goring, and others of their party lost some of their companions in the first wild rush across a hedge with a wet ditch on the other side. Jerry Wilmot's saddle-girth gave way, and he fell in a helpless but unhurt heap on the furrows; Lord Cadbury—a peer of whom more anon—failed utterly to clear the hedge; and Tony Dalton, of Goring's regiment, though a keen sportsman, came to grief somehow in the ditch, and thus ere long Alison Cheyne had as her sole squire the companion we have described, and together, after charging with many more a gate beyond the hedge, they had a splendid run over an open country.

Together they kept, Goring doing much in the way of guiding his fair friend, who though somewhat timid, and not much practised as an equestrienne, had now given her whole soul to the hunt, and became almost fearless for the time.

In a pretty dense clump 'the field' went powdering along the path through the village of Farnham, after which the deer headed off for Burnham Beeches, the beautiful scenery of which has been so often portrayed by artists and extolled by tourists; and then, like bright 'bits of colour' that would delight the former, the scarlet coats could be seen glancing between the gnarled stems of the giant trees, as the horsemen went pouring down the woody steeps.

'Take care here, for heaven's sake, Hiss Cheyne, and keep your horse well in hand, with its head up,' cried Bevil Goring. 'The tree stumps concealed here among the long grass are most treacherous traps.'

'I fear more the boughs of the trees, they are so apt to tear one's hair,' replied the flushed girl, breathlessly, as she flew, her dark blue skirt and veil streaming behind her; and now and then a cry of terror escaped her, as a horse and its rider went floundering into some marshy pool, though generally with no worse result than a mud bath.

At length the beeches are left behind, while the deer shoots on past Wilton Park, anon over Chalfont Brook, till she reaches the stable in a farmyard, and there is captured and made safe, and so ends the day, after which there is nothing left for the breathless and blown, who have followed her thus far, but to ride slowly back some fifteen miles to Slough.

Less occupied by interest in the hunt than with each other, Bevil Goring and Miss Cheyne had gradually dropped out of it, and at the time of the conversation with which this chapter opens were riding slowly along a narrow green lane that led—they had not yet begun to consider in what precise direction.

CHAPTER II.
AT CHILCOTE.

'The hounds threw off at half-past eleven, and the afternoon is far advanced,' said Miss Cheyne, with a little anxiety of manner. 'I must take the nearest cut home.'

'Thither, of course, I shall do myself the honour of escorting you.'

'Thanks—so much.'

She could not say otherwise, as she could neither decline his escort nor with propriety ride home alone; yet she gave a glance rather helplessly around her, as all her immediate friends—and one more especially, whose escort her father wished her to have had—were now left miles behind, having 'come to grief' at the first fence, and were now she knew not where.

But then she thought it was not her fault that they had dropped out of the hunt, or out of their saddles perhaps.

'To reach the high-road, we must take this fence,' said Captain Goring, finding that the narrow lane they had pursued, ended in a species of cul de sac.

'Not a gap, not a gate is in sight.'

'And by Jove, Miss Cheyne, it is a rasper!' he exclaimed. 'Allow me to go first, then follow, head up and hand low.'

He measured the distance, cleared the fence, and came safely down on the hard road beyond.

With a little cry of half delight and half terror curiously mingled, the girl rushed her horse at the fence, but barely cleared it, as its hoofs touched the summit.

'What a nasty buck jump,' said Goring. 'Is that an Irish horse, used to double fences, I wonder?'

'And all my back-hair has come down.'

'Glorious hair it is, below your waist and more.'

'And all my own,' said the girl laughing, as she placed her switch between her pearly teeth, and with her gauntleted hands proceeded to knot the coils deftly up; 'all my own, by production, and not by purchase. And now for home,' she added, as they broke into an easy trot. 'Such a hard mouth this animal has!' she exclaimed, after a pause; 'my poor wrists are quite weary.'

'Why do you ride him?'

'I have not much choice.'

'How?'

'I owe my mount to the kindness of a friend of papa's, to Lord Cadbury,' she replied, colouring slightly, but with an air of annoyance.

'Indeed,' said Goring, briefly, and then after a pause, he added, 'you have ridden with these hounds before.'

'Yes, once when the meet was at Iver's Heath, and again when it was at Wokingham, and the deer was caught in a pond near Wilton Park.'

'And did Lord Cadbury on each occasion give you a mount?' he added, in a casual manner.

'Yes, we have no horses at Chilcote; but how curious you are,' she replied, colouring again, and with a sense of annoyance that he did not suspect, though the mention of the peer's name by her lips irritated Bevil Goring, and made him seek to repress the love that was growing in his heart.

Yet he knew not that he had impressed Alison Cheyne by his voice and manner beyond anyone whom she had hitherto met, but she was conscious that her heart beat quicker when he addressed her, and that the very sunshine seemed to grow brighter in his presence; but to what end was all this, she thought, unless—if he loved her—he was rich enough to suit her father's standard of wealth.

As they drew near Chilcote they tacitly, it seemed, reduced the pace of their horses to a walk.

'If it does not grieve you now to recur to the fate of your brother Ellon,' said Goring, in his softest tone, 'I may mention that I have a little souvenir of him, of which I would beg your acceptance.'

'A souvenir of Ellon!'

'Yes.'

'How came you to possess it?'

'When his effects were sold at Lahore, before his regiment marched again.'

'And this relic——'

'Is a ring with a girl's hair in it.'

'Thank you so much,' said she, with a quivering lip; 'but to deprive you——'

'Nay, nay, do not begin to speak thus. To whom should it belong but to you? And how strange is the chance that gives me an opportunity of presenting it!'

'I cannot decline it; but the girl—who can she have been? Poor Ellon, some secret is buried in his grave.'

'Soldiers' graves, I doubt not, hide many, and many a sad romance. I have generally worn it, curious to say, as my stock of jewellery is not very extensive.'

'Have you it with you now?'

'No, I never wear rings when riding, the stones are apt to get knocked out. I meant to do myself the pleasure of calling on you after the hunt; and shall, if you will permit me. To-morrow I am for guard.'

'For guard over what?'

'Nothing,' he said, laughing. 'There is nothing to see or to guard, but it is all the same to John Bull.'

'The day after, then?'

'The day after.'

They were close to the house now, and, lifting his hat, he bowed low and turned his horse just as a groom, who had been waiting in the porch, took hers by the bridle, and, waving the handle of her switch to him in farewell, Miss Cheyne gathered up her riding skirt and entered the house.

Bevil Goring lingered at the further end of the avenue that led to Chilcote, which was in a lovely locality, especially in summer, one of those sunny places within thirty miles of St. Paul's, and one secluded and woody—a place like Burnham Beeches, where the tree trunks are of amazing size, and the path that led to the house went down a deep dell, emblossomed in a wilderness leafy at all times but in winter.

The ash, the birch, and contorted beeches overhung the slopes on each side, and there seemed an entire absence of human care about them; and there in summer the sheep wandered among the tender grass, as if they were the only owners of the domain; but Bevil Goring had but one thought as he looked around him, and then turned lingeringly away.

'How delicious to ramble among these leafy glades with her! How deuced glad I am that I have that poor fellow's ring, and can gratify her—perhaps myself too. Bother the guard of to-morrow; but I must get it over as best I may.'

He lighted a cigar, and at a trot took the road to Aldershot, but so sunk in thoughts that were new and delicious that he forgot all about his 'soothing weed' till it scorched his thick dark moustache.

Meanwhile let us follow Alison Cheyne into her somewhat sequestered home.

She had blushed with annoyance when resigning the reins of her horse to Gaskins, Lord Cadbury's groom, while thinking that there was neither groom nor stable at Chilcote, though, as her father had told her many a time and oft, there were stalls for four and twenty nags at Essilmont, where others stabled their horses now; and sooth to tell, for causes yet to be told, she was provoked at being under any obligation to old Lord Cadbury, especially in the now reduced state of their fortunes.

She was received with a bright smile of welcome in the entrance hall by their sole male attendant, old Archie Auchindoir, Sir Ranald's man-of-all-work, who looked resentfully after the unconscious groom while taking away the horse, which he would gladly have retained for his young mistress by force if he could, for Archie thought regretfully of the once ample ménage at far away Essilmont, where, like his father before him, he had grown to manhood and age in the family of the Cheynes.

He was true as steel to his old master, to whom, however, he sometimes ventured to say sharp things in the way of advice; and to the 'pock-puddings,' as he called the denizens of the present locality, he fearlessly said sharper and very cutting things with a smirk on his mouth and a glitter in his keen grey eyes, and with perfect impunity, as they were addressed in a language to the hearers unknown; but it gratified Archie none the less to utter them, as he often did in the guise of proverbs.

'Papa at home?' asked Alison.

'Yes, Miss,' said he, receiving her gloves and switch. 'And waiting anxiously for you, though ower proud to show it even to me; but, my certie, it's the life o' an auld hat to be weel cockit.'

Their household was so small now that Alison had no maid to attend upon her, and quickly changing her costume she sought at once the presence of her father, smoothing her hair with her white hands as she hurried to receive his kiss; for, so far as he was concerned, Alison, in her twentieth year, was as much a child as when in her little frocks.

He was seated in a little room called his study, though there were few books there; but there were a writing table usually littered with letters, and invariably with an unpleasant mass of accounts to amount 'rendered;' an easy chair, deep, high-backed, and cosy, in which he passed most of his time, and which was so placed that from it he had a full view of the long, woody, and neglected avenue. There he spent hours reading the Field and turning over books on farming, veterinary surgery, and so forth, by mere force of habit, though he had not an acre of land or a dog or a horse to look after now; and these studies were varied by the perusal of prints of a conservative tendency, and an occasional dip into the pages of Burke.

He courteously threw into the fire the end of the cigar he had been smoking as his daughter entered, and twining her soft arm round him said, while nestling her face in his neck—

'Oh, papa, I have never had so delightful a day with the hounds as this!'

The master of a broken fortune and impoverished household, Sir Ranald Cheyne, baronet of Essilmont and that ilk, as he duly figured in that year's volume of Burke and Debrett, with a pedigree going far beyond the first baronet of his house, who had been patented in 1625, and duly infeft at the Castle-gate of Edinburgh with a vast patrimony in Nova Scotia, and 'power of pit and gallows' over his vassals there, was a proud and querulous man, stately in manner and somewhat cold and selfish to all men, save his daughter Alison, who was the apple of his eye, the pride of his old heart, on whose beauty, as the means of winning another fortune, all his hopes in life were based, and with whom he was now living in semi-obscurity at Chilcote, a small, venerable, and secluded mansion in Hampshire.

Sir Ranald had a pale and worn face that in youth had been eminently handsome; his silver hair, or rather what remained of it, was brushed back behind his wax-like ears, and a smile of great tenderness for his daughter, the last of his old, old race and the hope of his age, lighted up his aristocratic features.

A gold-rimmed pince-nez was balanced on the thin ridge of his rather aquiline nose, and though his bright blue eyes were smiling, as we say, their normal expression may be described as usually one of 'worry.'

His voice was in unison with his face—it was worn too, if we may use the expression, yet soft and not unmusical.

'You had an escort to the gate, I saw?' said he, interrogatively. 'Lord Cadbury, of course; why did he not come in?'

'Oh, no; I missed him in the field somewhere.'

'And your escort?'

'Was Captain Goring—you know him—from Aldershot,' she replied, a little nervously.

'Again?' said Sir Ranald, with just the slightest shade of displeasure flitting over his face. 'You were safely driven to the meet by Mrs. Trelawney?'

'Yes; and, when I last saw her and dear little Netty, their victoria was wedged between a drag and a tax-cart. I do hope they escaped without harm.'

'I hope so, too, for she is a very charming woman. And you found Cadbury duly waiting at Salthill with his horses?'

'Yes; and Gaskins came here to get mine.'

'I hope you duly thanked Cadbury.'

'Of course, papa.'

'But why did he not make an effort to escort you home?' asked Sir Ranald, whom this point interested.

'I missed him in the running, as I said, papa,' replied Alison, colouring now. 'He is so slow at his fences.'

'Slow; he has the reputation of generally riding faster than his horse,' said Sir Ranald, who was unable to repress a joke at the parvenu peer, whom he was not without quiet hopes of having for a son-in-law. 'Then, I suppose, Captain Goring was your escort for most of the day?'

'Yes,' replied Alison, frankly.

'In fact, I may presume that you and he were always neck-and-neck; taking your fences together, and all that sort of thing?'

'Oh, no, papa; certainly not,' replied Alison, thinking it was unwise to admit too much, though her father's surmises were very near the truth.

'I am astonished that Cadbury did not make an effort to join you.'

'I never saw him after the hounds threw off,' said Alison, a little wearily, as she knew how her father's secret thoughts were tending.

'Did you look for him?'

'No.'

'So—so—this is exactly what happened before.'

'Can I help it, papa, if his wont is to fail at the first fence?'

'You can help Captain Goring so opportunely taking his place.'

'I do not quite see what his place is; but oh, papa, what do you think? Capt. Goring heard of poor Ellon in India—he actually laid him in his grave, if one may say so!'

'How?'

'He commanded the soldiers who fired over it.'

'Indeed!' said Sir Ranald, with some interest now.

She was about to mention the proffered ring, which she deemed a precious relic, when her father said with a tone of some gravity, and even crustily—

'I don't much like your following the hounds, and think you must give it up.'

'Oh, it is delightful; and if I had a horse of my own——'

'There you go!' exclaimed her father, with a petty gush of irritation; 'I don't like it! Think how a girl looks in an October morning at a cover-side, her eyes watering, perhaps her nose red, and her cheeks blue, and after a while, perhaps, with her hat smashed, her habit torn, her hair hanging down her back, and some fellow fagging by her side drearily when he wishes her at the devil; or think of her learning to talk of curbs and spavins, hocks, stifle, and thoroughpin, like the gentleman jockey of a dragoon corps.'

'Oh, you dear old thing!' exclaimed Alison, caressing him and laughing, though she knew that his irritation was caused only by her having permitted Bevil Goring to take the place of her elderly and titled admirer. 'I have so little amusement here at Chilcote, papa, that I did not think you would grudge me——'

'A run with the hounds on Cadbury's horses?' he interrupted, with a slight quiver, 'but I dislike the risks you run, and the chance medley acquaintances you may meet; but pardon my petulance, darling; and now to dress for dinner, such as it is.'

Too well did Alison know that one of the acquaintances referred to was her late handsome escort; but she only said—

'I do love horses, and you remember, papa, how grieved you were when I had to relinquish, as a little girl, my dear old Shetland pony, Pepper, and you called me your "poor bankrupt child;" and I did so miss Pepper with his barrel-shaped body, his shaggy mane, and velvet nose that he used to rub against my neck till I gave him a carrot or an apple.'

'Hence, I am the more grateful to Cadbury for so kindly putting his horses at your disposal; but for him,' added Sir Ranald, forgetting his recent remark, 'you could not have been in your proper place with the buckhounds, or shared in the pleasures of the day. Of course you wince when I mention Cadbury,' said Sir Ranald, observing a cloudy expression flit over her face.

'Well, papa, he bores me.'

'Bores you? This is scarcely grateful after all the pleasure he puts at your disposal—his horses, his box at the opera, and the bouquets, music, and so forth he so frequently sends you.'

But Alison only shrugged her shoulders, while her father retired to change his costume; for either by force of old habit, or out of respect for himself, he always assumed evening dress (faded though it was) for dinner; albeit that the latter might consist of a little better than hashed mutton or scrag of mutton à la Russe, in which the housekeeper, Mrs. Rebecca Prune, excelled.

'I wish he would not talk to me so much of Lord Cadbury,' thought Alison; 'if his kindness is to be received in this fashion, I shall never accept a mount from him again, nor a piece of music either!'

In the few joyous hours she had spent—hours which the presence of Bevil Goring had, undoubtedly, served to brighten—Alison Cheyne had forgotten for a space the petty annoyances of her home life; its shifts and shams that often made her weary and sick at heart; her father's pride and frequent petulance; his constant repining at the present, and futile regret over the past; his loss of position, or rather of luxury and splendour, which the loss of fortune entailed.

CHAPTER III.
ELLON'S RING.

For a man of acknowledged and undoubtedly good family, Sir Ranald had rather eccentric ideas of ancestry and the value thereof. He did not certainly, like the Duke d'Aremberg or Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, claim kindred with the antediluvians, nor even carry his genealogy back to the dim days of Gadifer, King of Scotland, of whom it is recorded in that most veracious record Le Grand Chronique de Bretagne, that with Perceforest, King of Brittany, he sailed in company from the mouth of the Ganges, and was wrecked on the coast of Armorica; after which they were subsequently and severally raised to the thrones of Britain and Caledonia by their mutual friend Alexander le Gentil, in the time of Julius Cæsar; but he could solidly trace his descent from that Ranald Cheyne of Essilmont, Cairnhill, Craig and Inverugie, who was one of the barons that signed the Litera Communitatis Scotiœ to Edward I. of England, about the marriage of their queen, the little Maid of Norway.

Thus he had among his ancestors men who figured greatly in the troubles and wars of the olden time, who fenced with steel the throne of Robert I., who were ambassadors to England and France for David II. and the early James's, who shed their blood at Flodden Field and Pinkie Cleugh, at Sark and Ancrum Moor, and whose swords were ever ready when their country was in peril; and so, when he thought of these things, his proud spirit was apt to chafe, and at such times especially he was inclined to view with some contempt his friend Cadbury as a mushroom, being only a peer of yesterday, the second of his race, and for whom not even the ingenuity of the united College of Heralds could 'fudge' out a pedigree; but, for all that, the ample wealth of the latter was not without its due and solid weight in his estimation.

Like more than one old northern family, the Cheynes of Essilmont were supposed—nay, were confidently alleged—to have a mysterious warning of death or approaching woe, such as the spectre drummer whose beat at Cortachy announces when fate is nigh the 'bonnie House of Airlie,' like the bell of Coull that tolls of itself when a Dorward dies, the hairy-handed Meg Moulach of the Grants, the headless horseman of Maclean, or the solitary swan that floats on a certain lake at times fatal to another race; and so the Cheynes of Essilmont were supposed to be haunted by a spectral black hound, in the appearance of which Sir Ranald strove to disbelieve in spite of himself, though its solemn baying had been heard when Ellon died in India and his mother in London; and as for old Archy Auchindoir, the family factotum, he believed in it as he did in his own existence.

'Original sin,' i.e., the accumulated debts of a generation or two past, with his own mad extravagance in youth, had so completely impaired Sir Ranald's exchequer that, on a few hundreds per annum, the wreck of all his fortune, he was compelled, though not content, to live, 'vegetate' he deemed it, quietly in an old house in Hampshire; and times there were when in the great weariness of his heart—especially after the death of his two sons—he often thought, could he but see Alison provided for as he wished, he had no other desire than to be laid where many of his ancestors lay, a right which none could deny him, in the ancient chapel of Essilmont, where often he had with envy regarded the stiff and prostrate mailed effigies on their altar tombs, lying there with sword and shield, their faces expressive of stern serenity, and their hands folded in eternal prayer.

Chilcote, his present abode, was buried deep in woods that must have been a portion of the New Forest or the relics thereof, and had been built somewhere about the time of Queen Anne. Thus a great amount of solid oak formed a portion of its structure; and in the principal rooms the mantel-pieces ascended in carved work nearly to the ceilings, while the jambs were of massive stone, with caryatides, like the god Terminus, wreathed to the waist in leaves, supporting the entablatures.

The walls were divided into compartments by moulded panelling, painted with imaginary landscapes and ruins; the armorial bearings of the Chilcotes of other days; and beneath the surbase (or chairbelt, as it used to be called) were smaller panels, all painted with fruit and flowers.

The windows were deeply embayed, with cushioned seats. One of these was, in the summer evenings, the favourite niche in which Alison was wont to perch herself with one of Mudie's latest novels.

The furniture was all old, faded, 'shabby,' Alison truly deemed it; but in tone it seemed much in unison with the rooms, on the walls of which her father had hung a few family pictures, the pride of his heart, gentlemen in ruffs and cloaks, dames in stomachers and capuchins, and two there were in whom he loved to trace a fancied resemblance to his dead sons, Ranald and Ellon, for they were brothers, and bore the same names—Ranald Cheyne, who fell at the head of the Scots Life Guards at Worcester, and Ellon Cheyne, who had died previously at the storming of Newcastle; both men portrayed in the gorgeous costume of their time, and both looked to the life, 'blue-blooded Scottish cavaliers, pale, smooth-skinned, with moustache and love lock, haughty and imperious,' and each with an expression of face that seemed to say they would have thought as little of spitting a crop-eared roundhead as a lark, with their long Toledoes.

On the day after the hunt Lord Cadbury's groom, Gaskins, came riding to Chilcote with a magnificent bouquet from the conservatories for Alison, and his master's anxious inquiries as to how she had enjoyed the sport of the previous day, and a hope that she had not suffered from fatigue; and Alison, as she buried her pretty pink nostrils among the cool and fragrant roses, smiled covertly and mischievously as she heard from Gaskins how his master had 'got such a precious spill by funking at a bull-finch, when the hounds were thrown off, that he would be confined to the house for some days.'

Thus for a time she would be free from the annoyance of his presence.

Archie, the white-haired man-of-all-work, gave Mr. Gaskins a tankard of beer after he had leaped into his saddle, where he took what Archie called a 'standing drink, like the coo o' Forfar.' Lord Cadbury's powdered servants, in elaborate liveries, were always a source of supreme contempt (mingled, perhaps, with envy) to Sir Ranald's staunch henchman, and now he felt inclined to sneer if he could at the well-appointed groom, in his dark grey surtout, waistbelt, cockade, and top-boots.

'Braw leathers, thae o' yours,' said he, regarding the latter with some interest.

'Yaas,' drawled Gaskins. 'I flatter myself that few gents appear with better boot tops than Cadbury and myself. I clean them with a preparation—quite a conserve, Mr. Hackendore, peculiarly my own.'

'And what may that be?' asked Archie.

'Champagne and apricot jam,' replied Gaskins, twirling his moustache and eyeing the old man with intense superciliousness.

'Set ye up, indeed, wi' your buits and belts!' snapped Archie. 'Ye think yoursel' made for the siller; but a bawbee cat may look at a king.'

'I don't understand the sense of your remark,' drawled Gaskins, shortening his reins.

'Like enough—like enough; mony complain o' want o' siller, but few complain o' want o' sense; and a gowk at Yule will ne'er be bricht at Beltane.'

'What the devil is he talking about?' thought the bewildered groom, as he put spurs to his horse and trotted away.

'Wi' a' his bravery,' said Archie, with a grimace, 'he's a loon that will loup the dyke where it's laighest.'

Alison divided the bouquet into portions for various vases to ornament her drawing-room, and on the following day, after a more than usually careful toilette, while her father was occupied in worry and perplexity over letters and accounts, seated herself in the deep bay of a window that overlooked the avenue, her heart beating quicker as the noon wore on.

She had a novel in her hand, but we doubt if she knew even the title of it. Pleasure, doubt, and anxiety were mingling in the girl's mind—pleasure, as she thought, 'I shall see him again for a time, however brief!'—doubt of what might ensue if she saw him under the keen watchful eyes of her father, who could detect every expression of her face, and a great anxiety lest she might be requested to avoid all intimacy, even acquaintanceship, with Bevil Goring in future; but little could she foresee the turn matters were to take, or the events of the next few days.

Luncheon was long past, and the afternoon was drawing on, when Goring rode down the avenue and gave the bridle of his horse to Archie Auchindoir, who, with a considerable appearance of being flustered, had—on the approach of a visitor—hurried from the garden, where he had been at work, to don an old black claw-hammer coat, the reversion of Sir Ranald's wardrobe.

He ran the bridle rein deftly through an iron ring in the ivy-covered porch, and preceded the young officer, whose card he placed on a silver tray with as much formality as if the little mansion of Chilcote had been a residence like Buckingham Palace.

Sir Ranald bade him welcome with finished courtesy and old-fashioned grace, while Alison, her cheek mantling with ill-concealed pleasure—for what young girl but feels her pulses quicken in the presence of a handsome and welcome admirer—continued to keep her back to the windows; thus, during the usual exchange of commonplaces and inquiries, Sir Ranald, who watched both, failed to detect anything in the manner of either that could lead to the inference that they had more interest in each other than ordinary acquaintances, and began to feel rather grateful to the young officer who had come to do them a kindness.

'So glad to see you again, Captain Goring, and to thank you for your care of Miss Cheyne when with the hounds,' he said, motioning their visitor to a seat. 'The cavalier to whom I entrusted her, Lord Cadbury, seems to have come to grief at his first fence,' added the old gentleman, laughing over the mishap of his friend, to whom Goring would rather that no reference had been made.

'I promised to call, Sir Ranald, and inquire for Miss Cheyne, after our pretty rough run, especially by Burnham Beeches, where the pack hunted their game pretty hard,' said Goring, 'and also to beg her acceptance of a relic of your son Ellon, of the Hussars, of which I became possessed by the merest chance in India.'

'A thousand thanks. Most kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Sir Ranald, his usually pale cheek reddening for a moment.

'I learned incidentally from Miss Cheyne, as we rode towards Chilcote, that the poor lad who was killed at Lahore was her younger brother, and that the ring I possess had been his. It is here,' he added, opening a tiny morocco box, in which he had placed the ring.

It was a richly chased trinket, having two clam-shells of gold, with a diamond in the centre of each.

'Ellon's ring it is, indeed,' exclaimed Sir Ranald, in a changed voice, while the moisture clouded the glasses of his pince-nez.

'My farewell gift to him on the morning he marched from Maidstone—you remember, papa,' exclaimed Alison, with tears in her voice.

'I am not likely to forget, God help me, that both my boys are gone, and now I have——'

'Only me, papa.'

'It is a source of supreme satisfaction that I am the means of restoring this to his family,' Goring added, judiciously, as he was on the point of saying 'sister,' and he placed it in her hand; but that hand seemed so slim and white and beautiful that he was tempted to do more, for he slipped the ring rather playfully and rather nervously on one of her fingers, saying, 'It is a world too wide.'

'Of course,' said Sir Ranald, 'it is a man's ring.

'But, see!' exclaimed Alison, as she pressed a spring, of the existence of which Goring had been until that moment ignorant, and the two clamshells unclosing showed a minutely and beautifully coloured little photo, no larger than a shilling, of her own charming face.

'Good heavens!' said Goring, with genuine surprise and pleasure, 'I was all unaware of this secret, though I have worn the ring for two years and more.'

'And all that time you have been wearing my ring, my hair, my likeness,' muttered Alison, in a low voice, while Sir Ranald was ringing the bell.

'Delicious fatality,' thought Goring, as he looked on the sweet flushed face that was upturned to his, and their eyes met in a mutual glance that expressed more than their lips dared tell already, and which neither ever forgot. Luckily at that moment the baronet, on hospitable thoughts intent, was ordering Archie to bring wine, mentioning a rare brand from the small store which yet remained of the wreck of better days—a store kept for visitors alone.

'My brothers died within a month of each other in India, Captain Goring,' said Alison. 'Poor mamma never got over the double shock, and—and—we have never been at Essilmont since.'

'Could not your presence, your existence, console her?' asked Goring.

'No; her soul was centred in her boys.'

'I shall never forget your kindness, Captain Goring, in bringing us this little relic of Ellon,' said Sir Ranald; 'and now after your ride from the camp try a glass of this white Clos Vougeot. But perhaps you would prefer red. We have both, I think, Archie?'

Though the last bottle of the red sparkling Burgundy had long since vanished, Archie vowed there was a binful, and fortunately for his veracity Goring announced a decided preference for the white; and while Alison played dreamily with her brother's ring, and thought again and again how strange it was that her hair and her likeness should have been worn with it for so long in far and distant lands by Bevil Goring, the conversation turned to general subjects between the latter and her father, who came secretly to the conclusion that he 'was a very fine young fellow.'

He had seen the last on earth of Ellon, had stood by his grave, had seen the smoke of the death volleys curling over it, and seen it covered up; thus Alison thought he was more to her than any mere stranger could ever be, and already, in her heart, she had begun to deem him more indeed.

And after he had taken his departure, when she offered the ring to Sir Ranald, to her joy, he begged her to retain it, and, much to her surprise, answered that he meant to have a little dinner party.

'You quite take my heart away, papa—a dinner party!' exclaimed Alison.

'Yes, we shall have this young fellow Goring (he asked me to dine at his mess, you know), and his brother officers Dalton and Wilmot, Cadbury of course, and you can have Mrs. Trelawney, who is always charming company, to keep you in countenance—a nice little party.'

'Oh, papa,' exclaimed Alison, in genuine dismay, 'think of our poor ménage.'

'Tut—consult Mrs. Prune on the subject.'

'I thought you wished to have a rest from dinner parties.'

'I have been at so many, that some return——'

'Yes—but—but, papa——'

'What next, child?'

'Our last quarter's bills were so large,' urged Alison.

'Large for our exchequer, I have no doubt.'

'Let us call it luncheon, papa, and I think I shall arrange it nicely,' she pleaded, her heart quickening at the chance of meeting Bevil (she already thought of him as 'Bevil') again. So that was decided on, and the invitation notes were quickly despatched.

Alison had watched from a window the shadow of their visitor, as that of man and horse lengthened out on the sunlighted road, until shadow and form passed away; but Goring, as he rode homeward, was little aware that he had not seen the last of Ellon Cheyne's ring.

CHAPTER IV.
LAURA TRELAWNEY.

The invited guests all responded, and accepted almost by return of post, and a sigh of relief escaped Sir Ranald when he found no missives came with them, as he was generally well pleased when he saw the village postman pass the avenue gate.

'Captain Goring, I see, uses sealing wax—good custom—good old style,' said he, returning that officer's note to Alison, who prized it rather more than he knew; 'uses a shield too—the chevron and annulets of the Gorings of Sussex—not a crest; every trumpery fellow sticks one on his notepaper now—the crest that never shone on a helmet.'

So, from this circumstance, Bevil Goring rose in the estimation of the baronet, who knew all Burke's Armory by rote.

The luncheon lay heavy on poor Alison's heart; she thought of their cuisine, as it too often was—refined and dainty though her father's tastes were—meat roasted dubiously, then made up into stews and lumpy minces, with rice puddings, and she shivered with dismay, and had long and deep consultations with old Mrs. Rebecca Prune and her daughter Daisy; but when the day came her fears were ended, and she began 'to see her way,' as she said, and contemplated the table with some complacency.

In her blue morning robe, trimmed with white, which suited so well her complexion and the character of her beauty, she was cutting and placing in crystal vases the monthly roses and few meagre flowers with fern leaves from her tiny conservatory at the sunny end of the house to decorate the table.

'Don't they look pretty, papa?' she exclaimed, almost gleefully.

'Yes, but you, pet Alison, are the sweetest flower of them all,' said Sir Ranald, kissing the close white division of her rich brown hair.

'"Dawted dochters mak' daidling wives," they say,' muttered old Archie, who was busy polishing a salver; 'but our dear doo, Miss Alison, will never be ane o' them, Sir Ranald.'

For the honour of the house, Archie had been most anxious to furnish his quota to the feast, and said—

'Miss Alison, I am sure I would catch ye some troots in the burn owre by, though the weeds ha'e grown sae in the water, if you would like them.'

'Thanks, Archie, you old dear,' replied Alison, laughing, 'but we won't require them.'

The cold salmon and fowls, the salads, some game, the grapes, and other etceteras of a well-appointed repast, to which delicate cutlets were to be added, with some of Sir Ranald's irreproachable wines—almost the last remnants of a once well-stocked cellar—made the table complete, and Alison content; nor must we forget the dainty china and crested silver dishes, heirlooms for generations back, which were brought from their repositories, and were the pride of old Auchindoir's heart and of his master's too.

The chief of these was a relic of considerable antiquity, being nothing less than a maizer, or goblet of silver, bequeathed by Elizabeth, Queen Consort of Scotland, to her master of the household, the Laird of Essilmont, who, with Douglas, pursued Edward of England from Bannockburn to the gates of Dunbar, and which had emblazoned (in faded colours) and graven on it the Cheyne arms, chequy or and azure, a fess gules, fretty of the first, and crested with a buck's head, erased.

Mrs. Trelawney and her little daughter were the first to arrive. She swept up to Alison, kissed her on both cheeks, with more genuine affection than effusiveness, and apologised for the presence of her little companion.

'I knew you would pardon me bringing the poor child. She has no one to love but me, and mopes so much when left alone.'

'Netty, I hope, loves me too,' exclaimed Alison, taking the girl—a bright little thing of some eight years or so, with a shower of clustering curls—in her arms and kissing her fondly. 'I don't think papa would consider his little entertainment complete without Netty to prattle to him.'

Mrs. Trelawney, a brilliant blonde of seven and twenty, though a widow, looked almost girlish for her years; her figure was tall and eminently handsome; her white-lidded and long-lashed hazel eyes were full of brilliant expression; her manner was vivacious, and every action of her hands and head graceful in the extreme. She formed an attractive and leading feature in every circle, and usually was the centre of a group of gentlemen everywhere, and yet, singular to say, she rather avoided than courted both notice and society.

When she talked she seemed the art of pleasing personified; her words, her gestures, her bright eyes, and beautiful lips were all prepossessing.

She would invest petty trifles with interest; her accents were those of grace, and she could polish the point of an epigram, or say even a bold thing, better certainly than any other woman Alison had ever met. Her vivacity was said to approach folly; but even in her moments of folly, she was always interesting.

On the other hand she had times of depression almost amounting to gloom, most singular even to those who knew her best, and it was averred that, though not very rich, she had refused many eligible offers, and preferred the perfect freedom of widowhood.

'And now, dear,' she said, as she took an accustomed seat in the drawing-room, 'tell me all who are coming.'

'Well, there is Lord Cadbury.'

'Of course.'

'And Captain Goring.'

'Of course,' said the pretty widow, fanning herself, though a crystal screen was between her and the fire.

'Why of course?' asked Alison, colouring; 'and there is Jerry Wilmot—your devoted—and Captain Dalton, who will be sure to fall in love with you.'

At Dalton's name Mrs. Trelawney changed colour; indeed she grew so perceptibly pale, while her lips quivered, that Alison remarked it.

'Dearest, what agitates you so? Do you know him?' asked the girl.

'No—not at all!'

'What then——'

'I knew one of the same name who did me—let me rather say—my family—a great wrong.'

'But he cannot be the same person.'

'Oh, no. Besides, this Captain Dalton has just come from India with his regiment. And so you think he will be sure to fall in love with me?' added Mrs. Trelawney, recovering her colour and her smiles; 'and I with him perhaps.'

'That does not follow; but he seems just the kind of man I think a widow might fall in love with—handsome and manly, grave, earnest, and sympathetic.'

'But he may share in the aversion of Mr. Weller, senior, and have his tendency to beware of widows. I feel certain, Alison dear, that your Captain Dalton will never suit me.'

'You have seen him, then?'

'Yes—with the buckhounds the other day.'

'Wilmot, who admires you so much, will one day be very rich, they say.'

'Don't talk thus, Alison, or I shall begin to deem you what I know you are not—mercenary; but Jerry Wilmot has little just now; he has, however, a knowledge of horseflesh and a great capability for spending money, and thinks a pack of hounds in a hunting country is necessary to existence. He is a detrimental of the first water, and the special bête-noire of Belgravian and Tyburnian mammas.'

'It is a pity you should ever seclude yourself as you sometimes do, Laura,' said Alison, looking at her beautiful friend with genuine admiration; 'all men admire you so much, and you have but to hold up your little finger to make them kneel at your feet.'

'How you flatter me! But I never will hold up my little finger, nor would I marry again for the mines of Potosi and Peru. It is as well that little Netty is so busy with that photographic album, or she might marvel at your anxiety to provide her with a papa.'

'It is not wealth you wait for?'

'No.'

'What then, Laura?'

'Nothing.'

'How I shall laugh if the handsome Captain Dalton stirs that now unimpressionable heart of yours.'

'I shall be very glad to meet him,' said Mrs. Trelawney, with a curious hardness in her voice.

'Why?'

'Because I may compel him to love me, Alison,' and as Mrs. Trelawney spoke her eyes flashed with a triumphant glow such as Alison had never seen in them before.

'Compel him?'

'Yes.'

'It would be easy to make him love you; but would you marry him?'

'How your little head runs on love and marriage! No, Alison, I shall never marry—again!'

'Poor soul,' thought Alison, admiringly, 'how much she must have loved her first husband!'

And simultaneously with the entrance of Sir Ranald, the three brother officers—Bevil Goring, Jerry Wilmot, and Captain Dalton—were announced, and all these were men of the best style, in accurate morning costume, all more than usually good-looking, set up by drill, easy in bearing, and looking ruddy with their ride from the camp in a chill October day.

'I missed you early in the hunt, Miss Cheyne,' said Jerry, after the introductions were over. 'How you and Goring flew over that first fence!'

'I love to gallop over everything,' replied Alison, 'but I must confess that my sympathies in the field are always with the flying stag, or the poor little panting hare—a miserable, tiny creature, with a horde of men, horses, and dogs after it, and making the welkin ring when in at the death!'

'Yes, though by the way I never know precisely what the said welkin is, unless it be the regions of the air.'

All unaware that his name had been so recently and so curiously on her lovely lips, Captain, or Tony Dalton, as his comrades called him, was saying some commonplaces to Mrs. Trelawney, over whose chair he was stooping.

He was not much her senior perhaps in years, but he had seen much of service in India. Tall and dark, with closely-shorn brown hair, he had an air and face that were commanding; but with a simple grace of bearing that belied any appearance of self-assertion.

After India, where he had been long on a station up country; where all the Europeans were males, and not a lady within three hundred miles; where a wet towel and half a water-melon formed the morning head-dress, and visits of the water-carrier incessant; where books were scarce, serials scarcer, flies and heat plentiful; and where the little tawny women, with their nose-rings and orange-coloured cheeks, were all alike hideous, to see such a woman as Mrs. Trelawny, with her snowy skin, her shell-like ears, and marvellous hands, was something indeed.

She was dressed in rich dark silk—not mourning; she wore no widow's cap, but had her fine hair simply braided in a heavy and beautiful coil at the back of her handsome head, and she looked as fair and lovely as she must have done on her marriage morning.

Bevil Goring had begun to address Alison, whose sweet eyes were shyly upturned to his as she placed in the bosom of her dress a rosebud he had taken from the lapel of his coat, when the deep Doric voice of Archie Auchindoir was heard announcing the bête-noire of both.

'Lord Cawdbury.'

CHAPTER V.
ALISON'S LUNCHEON PARTY.

A man, between fifty and sixty years of age, having a short, paunchy, and ungainly figure, grizzled hair, ferret-like eyes with a cunning unscrupulous expression, and a long heavy moustache which was almost white, entered with a smiling face and an easy and well-assured air that was born, not of innate good breeding, but of the supreme confidence given by position and a well-stocked purse.

Coarse and large hands and ears, with an over-display of jewellery, especially two or three gold-digger-like rings, showed that, though the second peer of his family, Lord Cadbury was of very humble origin indeed.

His face wore its brightest smile as he greeted his hostess, Alison, and under his white moustache showed the remainder of a set of teeth that, as Jerry Wilmot said afterwards, were like the remnants of the old Guard, 'few in number and very much the worse for wear.'

He shook the slender hand of Sir Ranald with considerable cordiality, yet not without an air of patronage, bowed over Mrs. Trelawney's gloved fingers, nodded slightly to the three officers (Cadbury did not like military men), and, seating himself by Alison's side, banteringly accused her of running away at Salthill and leaving him behind (he did not say in the ditch), which was precisely what she did do; nor did she attempt to excuse herself, but simply rose and took his arm when Archie announced the luncheon was ready, and, the moment he seated himself, the peer began to expatiate upon the improvements he was making at Cadbury Court, for behoof of the table generally, though his remarks were made especially to her; but she heard with indifference a description of the vineries, pineries, and so forth, which he was erecting at a vast cost.

Not so her father, who, with the pince-nez balanced on his aristocratic nose, heard of these things with a face which wore a curiously mingled expression of satisfaction and contempt; for he failed not to recognize a tone of vulgar ostentation that seemed so well to suit, he thought, 'the tradesman's coronet of yesterday,' and endeavoured to turn the conversation to hunting, though his days for it were passed.

'The world changes, and has changed in many things, Captain Dalton,' said he; 'but true to his old instincts man will always be a huntsman and a soldier.'

'But to uncart a tame deer, or let a hare out of a bag, and then pursue it with horse and dog as if one's life depended upon the recapture, scarcely seems a sane proceeding,' said Lord Cadbury, who still felt the effects of his 'spill' in the field, 'and all unsuited to this age of refinement.'

'I believe only in the refinement that is produced by the education of generations,' said Sir Ranald, a little irrelevantly, as he tugged his white moustache and felt himself unable to repress a covert sneer at the very man for whom he had destined Alison, with whom the peer was too much occupied to hear what was said.

With all her regard and esteem for old Archie Auchindoir, Alison was rather bored by the bewilderment of Goring and others, on whom he was in attendance, at his quaintness, oddity, and unintelligible dialect; and sooth to say, all undeterred by rank and wealth, he was very inattentive and curt to Lord Cadbury, of whose views he was no more ignorant than most servants usually are of their superior's affairs.

Thus many a grimace stole over his wrinkled and saturnine visage as he watched the pair, and muttered, as he carved game at the sideboard—

'It is a braw thing to be lo'ed, nae doubt, but wha wad mool wi' an auld moudiewart like that? No our Miss Alison, certes.'

On the strength of his wealth and rank, of many a pretty present forced upon her unwillingly, yet with her father's consent, and curiously enough upon his great seniority to her in years, which enabled him 'to do the paternal,' as Mrs. Trelawney once said, Lord Cadbury assumed a kind of right of proprietary in Alison Cheyne that was very galling to the latter before her guests, and under the sense of which Bevil Goring chafed in secret as he drank his wine in silence and gnawed his moustache in sheer anger, for Alison was fast becoming to him more than he might ever dare acknowledge to herself.

'You must have married when very young, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Dalton, who was plying her daughter with grapes and crystallised fruits.

'Yes—I was just seventeen.'

'It is so romantic to marry young.'