The eighth dawned at last, cold and dull as English May days so often are. Breakfast was hardly over before Kester ordered his horse, and away he started without telling any one where he was going. He was out all day, and did not get back till five o’clock, an hour after the arrival of his uncle, with whom had come Mr. Perrins, the family lawyer. Him Kester knew of old, but had not seen for a long time. He was rather surprised to see him, but it struck Kester that his uncle had probably some private arrangements to make before leaving England, in which the aid of Mr. Perrins might be required. “This is very sudden, uncle, about your leaving England,” said Kester. “Yes, it is very sudden,” replied the General. “It is not more than three weeks since Dick told me that he intended to go out. The reasons he gave me for coming to that conclusion were such that I could not blame him. I have no son of my own, and, somehow, since poor Lionel left us, I seem to cling to that boy; and so it fell out, that I presently made up my mind to go with him. I cannot bear the idea of living alone. I have only you and him—and you; Kester, are too much of a Bohemian, too much a citizen of the world—a wandering Arab who strikes his tent a dozen times a year—for me ever to think of staying with you. Dick is far more of an old fogey than you are, and he and I—I don’t doubt—will get on very well together.” “All the same, uncle, I shall be deucedly sorry to lose you.” Kester was destined to be still more surprised when he came down to dinner, for there he found Mr. Hoskyns and the Reverend Mr. Wharton, the octogenarian Vicar of Duxley. Mr. Hoskyns he had seen incidentally during the course of the trial, but not since. The vicar he had known from boyhood. It was by Lionel’s express desire that the two lawyers and the vicar had been invited to-day to Park Newton. What he was going to tell Kester to-night should be told to them also. They were all, in a certain sense, friends of the family; they were all men of honour; with them his secret would be safe. In simple justice to himself, he felt that it was not enough that his uncle and Bristow should be the sole depositories of that secret. There ought to be at least two or three family friends to whose custody it might be implicitly trusted, and whose good wishes and friendship would be sweet to him even in exile. None of the three gentlemen had any suspicion as to the one particular reason why they had been invited to Park Newton: not one of them had any suspicion that Richard Dering was none other than the Lionel whom they all so sincerely mourned. They had simply been invited to a little dinner party given by General St. George on the eve of his departure from England for ever. The last to arrive at Park Newton—and he did not arrive till two minutes before dinner was served—was Mr. Tom Bristow. He had driven Miss Culpepper from Pincote to Fern Cottage, and had stayed talking with Edith till the last minute.