Not one word had Durnford breathed to Lavendale about his wood-nymph. He too well knew his friend's frivolity and inconstant fancies with regard to women. A lovely heiress would have seemed a natural prey to the _roué_ who had ever exercised a potent fascination over the weaker sex, and who deemed himself invincible. Lavendale had his own pursuits at the Manor: yawned and dawdled through the day, took a hand at piquet with Durnford of an evening, sat deep into the night in the old chapel-room with the Italian student, poring over monkish manuscripts and mediæval treatises in dog Latin. Lavendale cared but little for Nature in her mildest aspects. The mountain and the torrent, stormy volcanoes, all that is wild and wonderful in Nature, had a charm for his eager soul; but the leafy glades of Surrey, the low hills and winding river, interested him no more than an enamelled picture on a snuffbox. "I cannot conceive what you can find to amuse you morning after morning among my oaks and beeches," he exclaimed to Durnford. "You must be horribly hipped, and you will be glad to go back to London, I take it, even though the town must be almost empty of good company." And now on this fair June morning, after taking his farewell of Irene, Herrick was surprised to see Lavendale riding along the avenue leading to the Manor House at an hour when that gentleman was generally lounging on a sofa, sipping his midday chocolate and dallying with the _Flying Post_ or _Read's Weekly Journal_. "Why, Jack, what took your lordship out so early?" he asked, emerging from a by-path, and overtaking the sauntering horse.