Her tall, elegant figure showed to advantage in the light morning dress, as in easy attitude she reached up to hold the refractory bough--Clara Neville was not one to indulge in unbecoming exertions. Her voice was low and well modulated, and fell pleasantly upon the ear--around them blossoming rose-bushes and the fragrant scents of the garden--and in the background bits of the red-brick Elizabethan house peeped at them through the trees. In no wise was he insensible to the influences of the picture and its central figure, the graceful, handsome girl talking to him in easy, familiar manner and with her most attractive smile; and then for the first time his father's words, spoken on the evening of the day he first saw Clara Neville, darted across his mind, "She will have Ardleigh Court"--and now it also dawned upon him that the words had been spoken with design. Yet how many men would willingly have changed places with him! And, even as things stood, his father's cherished scheme, for now he felt instinctively that such it was, would not have come adversely to him-- if--ah! that little "if!" "Oh, Mr Dorrien--there, look, you've splashed me all over by letting go of that branch too soon," cried Clara, with a little shiver. "And it has all gone up my sleeve, and it's rather cold. But never mind," she added with a laugh, "you've come off second best. How you've scratched yourself!" "Oh, it's nothing," he replied hastily, apologising for his remissness and feeling guilty. The branch which he had let go of was thorny, and had torn his hand at the same time as it had sprinkled his fair companion with the rain-drops which hung upon its leaves. "I think we've picked enough now, so we can go in. By the way, papa warned you that you would find the thorns your portion, didn't he?" she said, with a smile. In his present train of thought the phrase struck him as prophetic. He feared that many thorns would encompass the path by which he was to reach his desired goal, yet none the less was he determined to reach it. "Mr Dorrien," said Maud Neville, at luncheon, "the Fates have ordained that you shall go to a tennis party with us at the Pagnells' this afternoon. Now, don't swear--secretly, I mean." "Maud!" ejaculated her mother. "If you only knew how urgently Isabel entreats us to bring you, Mr Dorrien," said Clara, "you would be far too much flattered--or ought to be." "Ho-ho! Roland," laughed the Colonel. "No slipping away to smoke a quiet weed this time, no matter how heavy in hand the entertainment." "I don't think it'll be heavy," said Clara. "Isabel generally manages to get together a lively enough set. Too lively sometimes, for it is a favourite trick of hers to ask all the people to meet each other who are most `at dead cuts.'" "Very bad taste of her," put in Mrs Neville. "But I don't know what girls are coming to now-a-days."