"I would like to start at once," I cry, frankly, flinging hesitation to the winds; "as soon as possible. I am longing to see every one; and you know, 'Duke," sweetly, "I have yet to make a near acquaintance with _our_ home." I smile up to him, and am satisfied my words have caused nothing but the extremest content. "Very good. It is easily arranged; and next year we can come and get through what we now leave undone. They must be wanting us at home, I fancy; there are the birds and everything," concludes Marmaduke, in a reflective tone, which is the nearest approach to a return of reason he has yet shown. We spend a fortnight in London on our way back, when I am presented to some of my husband's relations. His sister, Lady Handcock, I do not see, as she has been in Canada for the last two years with Sir James, and, though now travelling homewards and expected every day, does not arrive during our stay in the Great Babylon. Cousins and aunts and friends, however, are numerous, and for the most part so kind that restraint vanishes, and I tell myself people-in-law are not so formidable as I have been led to believe. One thorn, however, remains among my roses and pricks me gently. Lady Blanche Going--with whom we stay a week--of all the cousins interests me most; though it must be confessed the interest is of a disagreeable nature. She has a charming house in Park Lane, and the softest, most fascinating manners; she is in every point such as a well-bred woman ought to be, yet with her alone I am not happy. For the most part looking barely twenty-five, there are times--odd moments when the invariable smile is off her face--when I could fancy her at least seven years older. Now and then, too, a suspicious gleam--_too_ warm, as coming from a decorous matron--falls from her sleepy almond-shaped eyes upon some favorite among the "stronger" sex, and I cannot forgive her in that she makes me appear the most unsophisticated, childish bride that ever left a nursery. So that I am glad when we leave her and move farther south to our beautiful home. Oh, the delight, the rapture, of the first meeting, when the first day after our return, I drive over to Summerleas: The darling mother's tearful welcome, the "boy Billee's" more boisterous one. Even Dora, for a moment or two forgets her elegance and her wrongs, and gives me a hearty embrace. And how well I am looking, and how happy! And how pretty my dress is, and how becoming! And how they have all missed me! And just fancy! Roland is _really_ engaged to the "old boy's" daughter, after all; and the colonel himself writes about it, as though quite pleased, in spite of her having such a good fortune. Though, indeed, why should he not? for where could he find any one handsomer, or dearer, or more charming than our Roly? and so on.