“Well, Tabby, I’m glad at least you and my wife are not ill friends,” he said. “I do not care for the loosening of old ties. And now I must be off. Mrs. Disney is waiting for me at the Green Bank.” Tabitha seemed a little startled on hearing that her late mistress was in Falmouth, but she made no remark upon the fact. “Good-bye, Tabby. Stay, there’s one favour you can do me. Get me a good cook. The woman we have at present would be a blight upon the happiest home in Christendom.” “I’ll find you a better one, sir. I’ll set about hunting for a good one this afternoon.” Martin shook hands with her on the door-step, and she stood watching him till he disappeared at the turn of the road. She watched him with a countenance full of sorrow. CHAPTER VIII. MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. Everybody in Trelasco and in the neighbourhood seemed glad to see Colonel Disney again. All the best people within a six-mile drive came bearing down upon the Angler’s Nest in the week that followed his return; and there were cosy little afternoon tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, or on the lawn, and Isola had her hands full in receiving visitors. Everybody congratulated her upon having her hero back from the wars. “You ought to be very proud of your husband, Mrs. Disney,” said Vansittart Crowther, with his air of taking all the world under his protection. “I have always been proud of him,” Isola answered gently. “I was proud of him before the Burmese War.” “Your poor wife has been looking very unhappy for the last few months,” Mrs. Crowther said to the colonel, with a motherly glance at Isola. “I really had a good mind to write to you and beg you to hurry home if you didn’t want to find the poor thing far gone in a decline when you came back.” “My dear Mrs. Crowther, what nonsense,” cried Isola, growing crimson at this motherly officiousness. “I have never been out of health, or in the least likely to go into a decline. One cannot always look like a dairy-maid.” “My dear, there’s no use talking, you looked very bad. Had one of my girls looked as ill, I should have taken her off to Buxton to drink the waters, without an hour’s delay.” That visit of the Crowthers seemed much longer than any other afternoon call. The Crowthers, husband, and wife, and elder daughter, had an inquisitorial air, Isola fancied, an air of scrutinizing her house and herself and her surroundings, which was intolerable to her; although on Mrs. Crowther’s part she knew the scrutiny was made in the utmost benevolence, and the officiousness was the outcome of a nature overflowing with the milk of human kindness. “I wish you had written to me, Mrs. Crowther,” said Disney. “I couldn’t have come home any sooner, but I could have telegraphed to my sister Allegra to look after my wife, and cheer her solitude. I was a fool not to have had her here all along.”