Christian Harefield, now lord of the double estates, went back to the Continent, where he was heard of no more for the next five years, at the end of which time there came a report of his marriage with a very handsome Italian girl; but as everybody in Little Yafford remarked, ‘there had been no advertisement in the _Times_, which made the whole thing seem rather odd and irregular.’ A year or two later Mr. Harefield was heard of as living near Florence with the lovely Italian wife and a baby, and nine years after his father’s death he came suddenly home to the Water House, bringing the lovely wife, and a little girl of three years old, home with him. He was now a man of middle age, very grave of aspect, but courteous and not inaccessible. Aged people at Little Yafford began to speculate upon a change at the Water House. It would be as it had been when the late Christian Harefield was a child, and old Mr. and Mrs. Harefield gave hunting breakfasts and dinners, and the old place was kept up altogether as it ought to be--with a great deal of company in the dining-room, and plenty of waste and riot in the kitchen and servants’ hall. Christian Harefield did not quite realize those hopes which memory had evoked in the hearts of the oldest inhabitants of Little Yafford; but he was not unsocial. The Water House resumed something of its ancient splendour: there was a large household liberally conducted--a fine stud of horses filled the roomy old stables. Mr. Harefield received his neighbours cordially, and gave dinners enough to satisfy the most exacting among his friends. There had been a great many stories, for the most part purely the work of invention; or of that gradual cohesion of casual particles floating in space, which is the root of all scandal. Some people had heard, as a certain fact, that the beautiful Italian had been a flower girl, and that Mr. Harefield had seen her selling violets in the streets of Florence. Others were equally certain that she had been an opera singer. Others were assured that ballet-dancing had been her profession at the time she attracted her wealthy lover’s attention. The more scandalous hinted darkly that she was somebody else’s runaway wife, and that Christian Harefield’s marriage was no marriage at all.