He shook the slender hand of Sir Ranald with considerable cordiality, yet not without an air of patronage, bowed over Mrs. Trelawney's gloved fingers, nodded slightly to the three officers (Cadbury did not like military men), and, seating himself by Alison's side, banteringly accused her of running away at Salthill and leaving him behind (he did not say in the ditch), which was precisely what she did do; nor did she attempt to excuse herself, but simply rose and took his arm when Archie announced the luncheon was ready, and, the moment he seated himself, the peer began to expatiate upon the improvements he was making at Cadbury Court, for behoof of the table generally, though his remarks were made especially to her; but she heard with indifference a description of the vineries, pineries, and so forth, which he was erecting at a vast cost. Not so her father, who, with the _pince-nez_ balanced on his aristocratic nose, heard of these things with a face which wore a curiously mingled expression of satisfaction and contempt; for he failed not to recognize a tone of vulgar ostentation that seemed so well to suit, he thought, 'the tradesman's coronet of yesterday,' and endeavoured to turn the conversation to hunting, though his days for it were passed. 'The world changes, and has changed in many things, Captain Dalton,' said he; 'but true to his old instincts man will always be a huntsman and a soldier.' 'But to uncart a tame deer, or let a hare out of a bag, and then pursue it with horse and dog as if one's life depended upon the recapture, scarcely seems a sane proceeding,' said Lord Cadbury, who still felt the effects of his 'spill' in the field, 'and all unsuited to this age of refinement.' 'I believe only in the refinement that is produced by the education of generations,' said Sir Ranald, a little irrelevantly, as he tugged his white moustache and felt himself unable to repress a covert sneer at the very man for whom he had destined Alison, with whom the peer was too much occupied to hear what was said. With all her regard and esteem for old Archie Auchindoir, Alison was rather bored by the bewilderment of Goring and others, on whom he was in attendance, at his quaintness, oddity, and unintelligible dialect; and sooth to say, all undeterred by rank and wealth, he was very inattentive and curt to Lord Cadbury, of whose views he was no more ignorant than most servants usually are of their superior's affairs. Thus many a grimace stole over his wrinkled and saturnine visage as he watched the pair, and muttered, as he carved game at the sideboard-- 'It is a braw thing to be lo'ed, nae doubt, but wha wad mool wi' an auld moudiewart like that? No our Miss Alison, certes.'