"Romance cannot last for ever, my dear aunt. We have been married nearly three years. It is time we became like other people. I have just your feeling about Newmarket. I was keen about the stud for the first year or two, petting the horses, and watching their gallops in the early mornings; and then it began to seem childish to care so much about them; and whether they won or lost it was the same thing over and over again. The trainer and his boys said just the same things about every success and every defeat. The crack jockeys were all the same, and I hardly knew one from another. I still love the horses for their own sake; and I am miserable if any of them are sold into bondage. But I am sick to death of the whole business." There was a fortnight to spare before Vera was to start for Italy, and Lady Okehampton wanted her to stay at Disbrowe till a day or two before she left England. "Portland Place will be awfully _triste_," she said; "I cannot see why you should go and bury yourself alive there for a fortnight." Vera pleaded preparations--clothes to order for the winter. "Surely not in London, when you can stop in Paris and get all you want." There were other things to be done, arrangements to be made, Vera told her aunt. A certain portion of the staff was to start for Rome, by direct and rapid journeying, while she, with only her maid and a footman, was to travel by easy stages along the Riviera. Lady Okehampton was rather melancholy in the last hour she and her niece spent together in her morning-room. "I'm afraid the pace at which you and Claude are taking life must wear you out before long," she said. "You are never quiet; always rushing from one thing to another; even here, where I wanted you to come for absolute rest, just to dawdle about the gardens, and doze in a hammock all the afternoon, with a quiet evening's bridge. But you have given yourself no more rest here than in London. Okehampton told me the way you tore about on those ungovernable horses, miles and miles away over the moor, while other people were jogging after the hounds, or waiting about in the lanes. He said it was not cubbing, but skylarking; and the skipper complained that Mr. Rutherford insisted on sailing the yacht in the teeth of a dangerous gale. 'He's the generousest gentleman I've ever been out with,' old Peter said, 'but he's the recklessest; and I wouldn't give twopence for his chance of making old bones.'" "Poor old Peter," sighed Vera. "We often had a squabble with him--what he called a stand-further. He's a conscientious old dear, and a fine sailor; but he would never have found the shortest way to India." "You wanted rest, Vera; but instead of resting, you have done all the most tiring things you could invent for yourself." "Claude is the inventor, not I. And it is good for me to be tired; to lie down with weary limbs and fall into a dreamless sleep or into a sleep where the dreams are sweet, and bring back lost things."