of the servants bringing the luncheon; but these once seen, and their wearer once talked to, sport was over with him for the day, and he strolled back with Miss Lexden, at a convenient distance behind Miss Townshend and Captain Lyster, who led the way. "You are soon tired of your sport, Mr. Churchill," said Barbara; "I should have thought that you would have followed ardently any pursuit on which you entered." "You do me a great deal too much honour, Miss Lexden," replied Churchill, laughing; "my pursuits are of a very desultory nature, and in all of them I observe Talleyrand's caution,--_Point de zèle_." "And you carry that out in every thing?" "In most things. Mine is a very easy-going, uneventful, unexcitable life; I live thoroughly quietly; _da capo_--all over again; and it is seldom that any thing breaks in upon the routine of my humdrum existence." "Then," said Barbara, looking saucily up at him from under her hat--"then you do not follow the advice which your favourite Talleyrand gave to the ambassadors whom he was despatching, _tenez bonne table, et soignez les femmes_." Churchill looked up, and for an instant caught her glance; then he laughed lightly, and said, "Well, not exactly; though the dinners at the club, even the modest joint and the table-beer, are not by any means to be despised; and as for the rest of it, not being a diplomatist, Miss Lexden, I have no occasion to play the agreeable to any one save in my own house, and, being a bachelor, the only woman I have to see to as properly _soignée_ is my old mother, and I _do_ like her to have the best of every thing." "Your mother lives with you?" "Yes, and will, so far as I can see, until the end of the chapter." "She--you must be very fond of her!" said Barbara, as by a sudden impulse, looking up at his kindling eyes and earnest face. "I am very proud of her," he replied; "she is more like my sister than my mother; enters into all my hopes and fears, shares all my aspirations, and consoles me in all my doubts." "More like your wife, then," said Barbara, with a slight sneer. "You have in her a rare combination of virtues." "No," said Churchill; "not rare, I am disposed to think. I don't suppose that, in your class,--where maternity means nothing in particular to sons, and merely chaperonage, or the part of buffer, to ward off paternal anger for bills incurred, to daughters,--such characters flourish; but in mine they are common enough."--("A little touch of old Harding's Radicalism in that speech, by Jove!" thought he to himself.)