There were no fine wines, no foaming English ale, but the Cape Madeira made good beverage, mixed with water; and there was an old-fashioned silver service before Mrs Daveney, from which she distilled coffee clear as amber, and steaming milk; the table-linen was white as an African sun can bleach it, and the light from two tall wax candles, mantled in the cherry-patterned delf. The ladies took some coffee, in compliment to their guests--what trifles place people at ease with one another. Their light supper was long since over; but Mr Daveney, who had been busy about his farm defences all day, enjoyed his meal the more for the companionship of brother-soldiers. At the sound of Eleanor's voice, Ormsby, who had paid no attention to her appearance beyond a bow, glanced across the table, and, with his usual air of nonchalance, put aside the light on his left hand, that he might have a better view of the speaker; and having satisfied himself that the pale cheek and braided hair of the one sister was less attractive to him than the radiant smile and sunny ringlets of the other, he helped himself to the smoking _La partje_, and prepared to do full justice to the good cheer he so little expected to find in the wilderness. Frankfort, as he looked round upon this family group, entered with deep interest into Mr Daveney's anecdotes of sport and peril--his anxieties for the present, his projects for the future. They went back together to the crowded homes of England, its pallid manufacturing children, its cities with dark buildings jammed together, its thronged populace, toiling; toiling on, with heaven's sunlight bricked out; its gigantic schemes,--some successful, blazing up and illuminating the world; some, like rockets, aiming at the sky, and falling in smoke upon the great ocean of eternity; some lying in gloom, with hopeless projectors, whose thoughts were to be seized and worked out by men who could and _would_ be heard. They talked too, of the struggle of the better classes to "keep up appearances," to "get their sons on," and their daughters "settled;" they, who had scarcely wherewithal to buy food and raiment,-- while here was a fair, plentiful country lying waste--a savage hunting-ground--space for thousands--a wild and lovely country, awaiting the hand of civilisation to make it prosperous and peaceful for all.