"All right," said Frank. "I expect some one too. I persuaded Gerald to promise to come. He never gives himself any play now at all. Ever since he came back from India he has been working far too hard. I don't think he is looking well either. He's not half the man he was before he went to India. Ah, there he comes! You girls must make a great deal of him to-day, for I want to coax him to give himself more relaxation." Eugenia and Sydney were very ready to do as Frank wished, and when Gerald came up to them he was most graciously received. It was quite true that he was not looking well. Eugenia noticed it very distinctly; he was looking much less well even than on his first return, and her heart smote her for the scanty thought she had of late bestowed on her old friend. "I am so very glad you can come with us to-day, Gerald," she said. "It is like old times, isn't it?" "Like, but very different," he thought to himself, but aloud he answered cheerfully, and in spite of himself his spirits began to rise. It _was_ like old times to have Eugenia walking beside him, her sweet bright face looking up in his, no one to dispute his claim upon her for the time. But his visions were soon dispelled. A new expression stole into her eyes, a soft flush crept over her face even while he watched it, and following the direction of her gaze to discover the cause of the change, Mr Thurston saw--Captain Chancellor coming forward quickly in their direction. The two men had never met since the evening of Gerald's return. They had eyed each other with covert suspicion then; they eyed each other with a scarcely more cordial feeling now. A slight, an almost imperceptibly slight, shade, it seemed to Gerald, came over Captain Chancellor's handsome face when he recognised Eugenia's companion. And he was not mistaken. "What can that fellow be turning up again for?" Beauchamp was saying to himself. "I thought he was comfortably over head and ears in business. I don't fancy him somehow. I wish to goodness he were back in India!" But notwithstanding this unexpressed hostility, outwardly, as was his habit, Captain Chancellor made himself very agreeable. He seemed to take special pains to be civil and cordial in his manner to Mr Thurston, and Frank felt a little annoyed at Gerald's somewhat ungracious reception of his friendly overtures. "What a pleasant fellow Chancellor is, really," observed Frank to Sydney. "Poor old Gerald hasn't improved in his manners with being in India, I'm afraid. I don't think he can be well. He is so surly and stiff sometimes now, and he never used to be." "Poor old Gerald" was only human after all. He was feeling very cross and bitter just now. His one ewe-lamb of a happy afternoon had been stolen from him. He could not all at once respond with careless cordiality to David's civil speeches, but walked on beside Eugenia in grave and moody silence.