“I am very glad to hear it--it is so much better for him,” Lady Markham said. So it was, no doubt; but this change, even of the bad habit which was familiar to her, gave her a little shock. Therefore it was with a failure of her usual bright cheerfulness that she took her place at the breakfast-table. “Has any one seen Paul?” she said. “Oh, fancy seeing Paul already!” cried the little girls. “He will come in when we have all done breakfast, and Brown will bring him everything quite hot, after we have waited and waited. Brown makes dreadful favourites, don’t you think so? He does not mind what he does for Paul.” “Paul has gone out for a walk,” said Lady Markham, not without solemnity. There was a cry of astonishment all round the table. Roland gave Harry a little nod of intelligence. (“He will have found it was no use, and he will have taken him away.”) Alice had looked up into her mother’s face with consternation; but as she was Paul’s unhesitating partisan through everything, she recovered herself at once. “He must be showing Mr. Spears the Park,” she said. “What a good thing if he will take to getting up early.” And nobody could say anything against that. Getting up early was a virtue in which Paul had been sadly deficient, as everybody was aware. However, this was long enough to have been occupied about Paul, and the children, tired of the subject, had already plunged into their own affairs, when their elder brother suddenly appeared, ushering in Mr. Spears--who in the morning light looked more out of place than ever--through the great bow window which opened on the lawn. The stranger had his hat in his hand, and made an awkward sort of bow. “I am afraid it is a liberty, my lady,” he said, stepping in with shoes all wet from the dewy grass. He did not know what to do with his hat, and ended by putting it under his chair when he got to the table. But by that time his embarrassment had disappeared, and his face grew benignant as he looked round, before sitting down, upon the girls and boys. “The sight of children is a benediction,” he said with that softening which mothers know by instinct. He was very like the man who wound up the clocks, who was a most respectable country tradesman; but this look reconciled Lady Markham to him more than anything else which had happened yet. “You are fond of children?” she said. “I ought to be. I have had six of my own; but they had hard times after my wife died, and there are but three left.” “Ah!” Lady Markham cried out of the depths of her heart. She looked round upon her own children, and the tears came to her eyes. “I am very, very sorry. There can be nothing in the world so dreadful.”