Between them, and at their feet, sat their only child, little Derval, a pretty golden-haired boy of six, intent on playing alternately with a toy ship and building a house of little wooden blocks, which he would rear and carefully construct again and again, each time that the tiny edifice was finished, demolishing it with a shout of laughter to begin his labour anew. "Come, Derval," said his mamma, after they had been watching him, fondly and silently, for nearly half-an-hour, while the sun sank beyond the sea, "it is time for bed, so put away your toys, darling." "Oh, I wish the sun wouldn't go down just yet," the little fellow exclaimed; "do let me make one more Pixies' house, mamma." "Pixies!" said Greville, with one of his bitter laughs. "By Jove! I wish that the Pixies, be they fairies or fiends, would show us where some treasure is buried, or teach me the art of growing rich!" "God grant, Greville dearest," said Mary, meekly, "that the child may always be as happy and innocent as he is now." "God grant, I say, that he may be rich--rich as we once were--richer, at least, than we are to-night." "Wealth does not bring happiness, Greville." "It brings the nearest approach to it, Mary; a light heart generally goes with a heavy purse. It is not so much for myself, as for the child and you, Mary, that I wish the past could come again--but the past with its experience. 'Twere useless else. You are lost here, with your perfect manner, your sweetness, your talents and high accomplishments." "Lost when I am with you?" "Yes, lost; who and what are our immediate neighbours?" Mary smiled silently, for she knew well that the occupants of Finglecombe village--a village as red as the soil, consisting only of rude cob-cottages as they are called--were only weavers of pillow-lace; and that the homely manners and slip-shod conversation of these, and of the adjacent farmers, with their incessant talk of short-horns and the merits of the Devonshire breed, their cows and "yowes," the weather and the turnip-fly, worried and bored her husband at times, though he was too well-bred to let them see that it did so; and they, on their part, were perfectly aware that there was a vast difference and distance between themselves and the mysterious and lonely gentlefolks who vegetated in the sequestered little cottage of Finglecombe. And yet, how Greville Hampton envied the contentment of the dwellers in those cob-cottages--people with whom the world seemed to go precisely as they wished it to do; and who deemed that human life out of Finglecombe and beyond the circuit of its interests and apple-orchards, must be a dull affair indeed for the greatest portion of mankind. "Poor Derval!" he sighed, as he saw the reluctance with which the child at last gathered up his toys; "Dryden was right--'men are but children of a larger growth'; children who often toil a lifetime in rearing fabrics unstable as yours. Kiss papa, darling, and now to bed."