Mr. Thacker's promised visit to Middlemeads was duly paid. He seldom allowed himself a holiday; but this visit was an agreeable combination of pleasure and business, in which he thought he might very safely indulge. Besides, to have it known that he was staying with Streightley of Bullion Lane; to have letters addressed to and to date them from "Middlemeads, Bucks;" to do the _grand seigneur_ for a few days, and simultaneously to do a very excellent stroke of business,--all these things were pleasant to Daniel Thacker's soul. He arrived late, only in time to dress for dinner; during which repast he contrived to impress Mrs. Stanbourne, next to whom he was seated, with a holy horror of his appearance, manners, and conversation; for Mr. Thacker had what his sisters were in the habit of calling his "company manners" towards ladies, and which consisted either in repulsive insolence and would-be sarcasm, or rather more repulsive adulation. Something had tended to put Mr. Thacker into great spirits on this particular evening. The dinner had been very good, the wines excellent; there was an air of luxurious refinement all around him, and his immediate proximity to Mrs. Stanbourne was specially grateful. He knew her as a woman of mark even among persons of mark; and "he liked that kind of thing, damme!" as he was accustomed to remark in moments of confidence. It mattered little to him that he received at first merely polite and at last chilling monosyllabic replies to his advances; he saw his way towards concocting a paragraph for the fashionable weekly paper in which his name should be included amongst a list of "swells" as being entertained at Middlemeads; and for what Mrs. Stanbourne really thought of him he cared but little. With the person with whom it was essential to him that he should stand well, he made much greater progress. Before the ladies retired for the night, and while Katharine was playing, he had flung himself on an ottoman where was seated Hester Gould, and had said in the nearest approach to a _demi-voix_ which with his natural nasal intonation he could command---- "Are you an early riser, Miss Gould?" Hester looked at him with a little astonishment, and without the slightest affectation of hauteur, at the sudden question, and replied, "Always, Mr. Thacker. I was compelled, as you know--who better?--to get up early to go to my pupils; and since I have lost the necessity I have not discontinued the practice." "That's right; it's a good habit; though, I suppose, one not much indulged in here. However, that's so much the better. I want a quiet half-hour's chat with you. Could you be in the grounds at eight to-morrow morning?" A properly-regulated young lady would have blushed and exclaimed at this proposition; a flirt would have manipulated her fan, and nodded assent behind it. Hester Gould was neither, and did neither. She simply looked Mr. Thacker straight in the face, and said "Yes."