He roused himself from his reverie with a sigh. The sun was nearly lost to view. Eastward the glooms of evening were beginning to enfold the landscape in their dusky wings. Blue curls of smoke wound slowly upward from the twisted chimneys of the Hall. A few belated rooks came flying over the Knoll on their way to their nests in the wood. The picture was redolent of homelike beauty and repose. “Only one life stands between me and all this,” he muttered, as his eyes drank in the scene greedily. “Only one life. If Lionel Dering were to die to-night, I should be master to-morrow of all that I see before me.” He rose and left the summerhouse. He could hear the clanging of the dinner-bell. It was time to go. “Only one life. And what is the value of any one particular life among the thousands that are born and die every day? Who would miss him—who would regret him? No one. He is an isolated link in the great chain of humanity. He might die to-night, or to-morrow, or next day. Stranger things than that have happened before now.” He pulled his hat over his brows and went slowly down the pathway, and was presently lost to view among the gloomy depths of the plantation. Left alone, Pierre Janvard settled himself comfortably in an easy chair to enjoy the perusal of one of Mr. St. George’s yellow-backed French novels. He was a thin, staid-looking man of fifty, decidedly more English than French in appearance. He was partially bald, and was closely shaven, except for two small whiskers of the kind known as “mutton chop.” What hair he had was thickly sprinkled with gray, and was carefully trained and attended to. He had a good forehead, a rather large aquiline nose, and thin, firmly-cut lips. In his suit of well-brushed black, and his spotless white tie, he looked the model of a respectable and thoroughly trustworthy servant. He looked more than that. Had he been set down at a public dinner among a miscellaneous assemblage of guests, a stranger would probably have picked him out as a banker or a rich merchant, or might even have asked, and have been pardoned for asking, whether he were not some celebrated lawyer, or member of the Lower House. He spoke English with a French accent as a matter of course, but he could express himself as readily in one language as the other. He had a particularly quiet, noiseless way of going about his duties that many people might have liked, but which would have been intolerable to others. You never seemed to know that he was near you till you found him at your elbow.