"Then you ought to have known, if you ever took the trouble to remember how good he always was to me, how sympathetic, how tolerant of my company when it was forced upon him day after day, how seemingly unconscious of my plainness and dowdiness. Why there was not a present he gave me which did not show the most thoughtful study of my tastes and fancies. I never look at one of his gifts--I was not obliged to fling his offerings back in his face as you were--without wondering that a fine gentleman could be so full of small charities and delicate courtesy. He was like one of those wits and courtiers one reads of in Burnet--not spotless, like Tennyson's Arthur--but the very essence of refinement and good feeling. God bless him! wherever he is." "You are very odd sometimes, Jessie," said Christabel, kissing her friend, "but you have a noble heart." There was a marked change in Leonard's conduct when he and his cousin met in the drawing-room before dinner. He had been absent at luncheon, on a trout-fishing expedition; but there had been time since his return for a long conversation between him and his mother. She had told him how his sullen temper had almost driven Christabel from the house, and how she had been only induced to stay by an appeal to her affection. This evening he was all amiability, and tried to make his peace with Randie, who received his caresses with a stolid forbearance rather than with gratification. It was easier to make friends with Christabel than with the dog, for she wished to be kind to her cousin on his mother's account. That evening the reign of domestic peace seemed to be renewed. There were no thunder-clouds in the atmosphere. Leonard strolled about the lawn with his mother and Christabel, looking at the roses, and planning where a few more choice trees might yet be added to the collection. Mrs. Tregonell's walks now rarely went beyond this broad velvet lawn, or the shrubberies that bordered it. She drove to church on Sundays, but she had left off visiting that involved long drives, though she professed herself delighted to see her friends. She did not want the house to become dull and gloomy for Leonard. She even insisted that there should be a garden party on Christabel's twenty-first birthday; and she was delighted when some of the old friends who came to Mount Royal that day insinuated their congratulations, in a tentative manner, upon Miss Courtenay's impending engagement to her cousin. "There is nothing definitely settled," she told Mrs. St. Aubyn, "but I have every hope that it will be so. Leonard adores her." "And it would be a much more suitable match for her than the other," said Mrs. St. Aubyn, a commonplace matron of irreproachable lineage: "it would be so nice for you to have her settled near you. Would they live at Mount Royal?" "Of course. Where else should my son live but in his father's house?" "But it is your house."