Before a month had passed I began to feel quite settled at the cottage. My duties, though many, lay within my capacity, and were such as I found pleasure in undertaking. It was impossible for me not to see that Sir Francis Devereux had taken a great and, to others, an unaccountable fancy to me; and occasionally he made such demands upon my time that I found it hard to get through my work. But I never grudged him an hour that I could honestly spare, for every day the prejudice which I had felt against him grew less, and I began to heartily like and pity him. Perhaps this change in my feelings towards him arose chiefly from the fact that he was obviously an unhappy man. The sorrow which was embittering my father's life and clouding mine had laid its hand with almost equal bitterness upon him. And was it not natural? For more than twenty years he had never looked upon the face or heard of the son whom he had loved better than any one else in the world. The heir of Devereux, for all he knew, might have sunk to the lowest depths of vice and degradation, and yet for all that, he must bear the title and, if he chose, take up his abode in the home where his ancestors had lived with honour for many centuries, and at the very best there was a deep blot which nothing could ever efface. The descendant of a long race of mighty soldiers had been publicly pronounced a coward; and yet some day or other, by the inevitable law of nature, he would become the representative of his family. To the stern old soldier I knew well that the thought was agony, and I longed to reassure and comfort him, as I most certainly could have done. But the time was not yet come. Naturally I saw a good deal of Maud Devereux and Lady Olive, much more of the latter than the former, for she appeared to have taken a violent fancy for Marian, and was often at the cottage. Conceit was never amongst my failings, but of course I could not help noticing that the times she chose for coming were those on which I was most likely to be at home, and generally when I returned from my day's work I found Marian and her gossiping over the fire, or if I was early, indulging in afternoon tea. She seemed determined to flirt with me, and I, willing to be amused, let her have her own way. We were both perfectly aware that the other was not in earnest, and we both--I particularly--took care not to lapse into the sentimental stage. On the whole we managed to amuse one another very well.