"It is

but one does not do that!" she protested. evident that you arrive from India, my dear papa."

With her father, at all events, she had ceased to be timid. During luncheon, a ceremony rendered a trifle pompous by the presence of four servants (for Lord Lannowe's establishment had always been maintained upon a footing out of proportion to his means), they had many little mild jokes together, and were indeed absorbed in one another to an extent which might have irritated their guest, had he not been a stranger to personal vanity. As it was, he was pleased and fascinated by this by-play, which, to his sense, exhibited the girl in a singularly attractive light. If anybody had told him that he was struggling heroically to fall in love with her, he would have been much astonished. He was not aware of doing any such thing; only he did every minute become more and more conscious that, if he were ever to have a bride, he would like her to resemble Miss Ferrand. Women, by his way of thinking, were either angels or-quite the reverse. By all accounts, the majority of them were quite the reverse; his own experience lent support to that view; and it therefore followed that the man who should win Monica Ferrand's heart and hand would be an exceptionally fortunate man.

It cannot be said that much excuse was given him for imagining that he himself was destined to be thus exceptionally fortunate. Immediately after luncheon Lord Lannowe took his daughter away into the garden, remarking:

'Now, Mr. Scarth, we'll leave you and Monsignor to your coffee and your cigarettes. I know you want to have a chat with him." And although this was not what Nigel wanted, he was fain to acquiesce.

However, it was not very long before he effected his escape; for Monsignor Nolan, who had said all that he

wished and meant to say respecting the Rixmouth estate and who confessed to being drowsy, was fast asleep in less than a quarter of an hour. Then Nigel rose and, stepping out softly through the open glass doors which gave access to a broad terrace, descried Monica beneath him, standing bareheaded in a sunk rose-garden, while at a distance of a hundred yards or so Lord Lannowe could be seen engaged in conference with the head gardener. He made haste to join her, and announced that he had come to say goodbye. She did not ask him to remain longer, but she did smile pleasantly upon him, and, in reply to a deferential suggestion of his, she said that she would enjoy very much indeed going over to tea with him one day when her father should be free to take her to Rixmouth. There was only time for the exchange of a few entirely commonplace observations before Lord Lannowe interrupted the colloquy; yet Nigel went off in good spirits. He felt again, as he had done on the occasion of his sole previous interview with Monica, that there was a tacit sympathy between them, and he was glad to believe that she, too, recognised its existence. Moreover, he participated most heartily in her father's joy that London had neither changed nor spoilt her.

"Well, we shall see," he said to himself. And then once more, with that recurrent fatalism which his creed seems almost to enjoin, "If it is to be, it will be."

Cuthbert Gretton's arrival, that evening, seemed not unlike the fulfilment of a decree of Providence; for, being a young man with plenty of common sense, he was just the sort of confidant whom his host most urgently needed. He could not see that there was anything to be miserable about in having shunted a bad tenant, nor was he disposed to attach much importance to alleged sectarian animosity.

"Oh, you'll be right enough, old chap," he reassuringly declared; "don't fret yourself. Nobody can expect to get settled in the saddle without a little bucking and fidgetting at the start; but all you have to do is to sit tight. There are worse things, after all, than being in possession of a fine property, which has always been pretty carefully looked after, I believe. Show yourself a good sportsman and I'll undertake to promise that you won't have much trouble with your tenants or your neighbours."

"That was my cousin Bessie's view," Nigel remarked, smiling.

"Was it? Well, I am humbly rejoiced to find myself in agreement with her for once; it isn't every day that I am so far honoured. The fact is that in this part of the world nothing is of quite so much importance as being able to ride or shoot, or do both, if possible. Of course, if you were a cricketer, that would be all the better; but you never went in for cricket, did you?" Nigel shook his head mournfully. "I have had so few opportunities of going in for anything! As far as sport is concerned, though, I am eager to qualify."

Cuthbert cheerily affirmed that that was the main thing.

"Want to do it and you'll do it. The people who fail in this world are the half-hearted beggars, and it never was your way to do things by halves."

That description of him was somewhat over-flattering, Nigel thought; yet there was enough of truth in it to make it pleasant, and what was an unalloyed pleasure was to find that Cuthbert was willing to resume their bygone intimacy as though it had never been interrupted. The two young men had many reminiscences to exchange and laugh over; their talk, after the first quarter of an hour, related, not unnaturally, to episodes

of Oxford life rather than to events more recent and less easy of discussion.

"Do you know, Gretton," said Nigel, while they were smoking together in the billiard-room in the evening (old Tom Scarth had never allowed a cigar or a pipe to be lighted in his house and would have been horrified at the idea of such an institution as a smokingroom), "it's a queer thing, but you aren't altered a bit."

"Why should I be?" asked the other, who was upon the point of returning the compliment, but thought better of it and held his peace. To tell Nigel that there was no perceptible difference between his present and his former self would be scarcely a compliment, perhaps. Perhaps also it would not be true.

"I suppose," answered the latter, "that when one has gone through so complete a transformation as I have, one is apt to feel surprised that the rest of the world should remain just the same."

"I should think you would have been even more surprised if we had all gone over to Rome in a body, wouldn't you?" asked his friend, laughing.

"That is what you will all end by doing!" cried Nigel, his eyes flashing and his whole face suddenly lighting up. "Oh, not literally you, perhaps; it may take a generation, or several generations. But that England will return eventually to the only true Church is certain."

"I should have thought," observed his friend, somewhat taken aback by this unexpected outburst, "that nothing was more antecedently improbable."

"I daresay that few things are more apparently improbable; it was most improbable, upon the face of it, I suppose, that Christianity would ever conquer the entire civilised world. But faith doesn't concern itself with probability."

"Well," said Cuthbert goodhumouredly, "every man has a right to his faith, not to speak of his visions. I wouldn't mention yours to Uncle Robert, though, if you want to keep the peace. He passes for a High Churchman; but I suspect that is chiefly because his brother was a rabid Evangelical, and I am quite sure he wouldn't stand being told that he would have to kiss the Pope's toe some day. How have you got on with him up to now?"

"I haven't seen him often; when I have he has been -rather rude," answered Nigel, with a sigh.

"Only rather? At that rate, he must have taken a fancy to you, I should think. Not a bad old fellow, all the same, when once you have got into the way of not minding him. I believe he does a lot of good and gives away a lot of money on the sly; only of course he accompanies his doles with kicks, which some people don't like. I must go and look them up at Knaresby tomorrow, by the way, or I shall never be forgiven. You'll come, won't you?"

On the following afternoon, which was fine and hot, the two young men paid their visit, and found the whole family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Scarth, their daughter and a couple of handsome, long-legged sons, who were on leave for a day or two from their respective regiments, drinking tea under a tent in the garden. Old Mr. Trenchard also was reclining in a low chair at his host's elbow and smiling benevolently upon the circle.

"This is capital!" he cried, recognising the newcomers at the first sound of their voices. "Well, my dear Cuthbert, and how is the world treating you? Giving yourself a little holiday, eh? Quite right !-quite wise! Everybody works the better for an occasional break."

"I fail to see," remarked Mr. Scarth acidly, "how it can be wise for a barrister who wishes to make his

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