'Papa, as I have often said, one can live without these accessories and surroundings. I have before urged you to quit even Chilcote, and let us go home--home to Essilmont--or what remains of it,' she added, in a broken voice, as she thought of Bevil Goring, and how a new light, bright as summer sunshine, had fallen on her life at Chilcote now. 'Home!' exclaimed her father, bitterly, 'home to the crumbling mansion amid the bleak braes where the Ythan flows, to be a source of local marvel and pity in our impoverished state. No--no! better our obscurity in Hampshire; who cares about us here, or thinks about us at all, unless it's Cadbury, who--who----' 'What, papa?' asked the girl, passionately. 'Would gladly make you his wife, my darling, and render my old age easy, with some of the luxuries we possessed in other times.' Alison shuddered at the suggestion, and again pressed her engagement ring to her lips, as if its presence were a charm, an amulet, a protection to her. 'It is his dearest hope that you may yet journey together through life,' urged Sir Ranald. Alison thought that a good part of the peer's journey had been performed already. But no more passed. They had reached home, and, slipping his last crown piece into the palm of the servant who opened the carriage door and threw down the steps, Sir Ranald led his daughter into their home, which looked strangely small and gloomy after the mansion they had just quitted. Alison felt that she had achieved a species of escape or reprieve, but it was only for a time. She felt certain that from first to last the dinner had been a concerted scheme, and that somehow, thanks perhaps to her own _brusquerie_, her elderly adorer, natheless his rank and wealth, had lost courage for the time. CHAPTER X. CAPTAIN DALTON. We have said that Tony Dalton--tall, dark, and handsome Tony, the pattern officer of his corps--had promised little Netty Trelawney an Indian necklet. He had duly called with it, and clasped round the neck of the slender girl a gold Champac necklace from Delhi, and it is difficult for those even acquainted with the _chef-d'œuvres_ of the first European jewellers, to imagine the beautiful nature of these necklaces, so called from the flowers whose petals they resemble. 'I know not how to thank you, Captain Dalton, for your kindness to Netty,' said the beautiful widow, with her brightest smile, 'it is much too valuable a present for a child.' 'She will not always be a child, and in the years to come----' 'The years to come; she is barely nine, and at twenty it is difficult to think of what life may be at thirty--still more at fifty,' said she, with a curious emphasis, as her eyelids drooped. 'But, like myself, you are not yet thirty,' said Dalton, 'hence we are both a long way off fifty.'