"There is plenty of room at Marsh House," said Mrs. Wornock, "and the garden is capable of improvement. When will you bring Miss Vincent to see me and my peacocks, Mrs. Mornington? Pray let it be soon. Your niece and I have at least one taste in common, and I think we ought to be good friends. Will you come to luncheon to-morrow, you and Miss Vincent, and you, Mr. Carew, if you are all disengaged?" "For my part, I would throw over any engagement that was capable of being evaded," said Mrs. Mornington, cheerily. And then in an undertone to Allan, she added, "It will be a new sensation to eat a meal at the Manor. This burst of hospitality is almost a miracle." Allan accepted the invitation unhesitatingly, and began to think Mrs. Wornock the most delightful of women, and to be angry with himself for ever having suspected evil in her past history. Whatever was strange in her conduct in relation to himself and to his father must be accounted for in some way that would be consonant with guilelessness and goodness. * * * * * That luncheon at Discombe Manor was the beginning of a new phase in Allan Carew's existence. All things must begin some day; and love--serious and earnest love--is one of the things which have their beginning, and whose beginning is sweeter than all the other first-fruits of life. It is not to be supposed that Allan was altogether a stranger to tender emotions, that he had come to five and twenty years of age without ever having fancied himself in love. He had had his boyish loves, and they had ended in disappointment. The blighting wind of satiety had swept across his budding loves before they had time to flower. All those youthful goddesses of his had shown him too soon and too plainly that there was very little of Olympian grandeur about them. As an only son with good prospects, he had been rudely awakened to the cruel truth that the average young lady has a sharp eye to the main chance, and that he, Allan Carew, was measured by his expectations rather than by his merits. Very early in his youth he made up his mind that he would never let his heart go out to any woman who contemplated marriage from a business standpoint; and he had been keenly on the watch for the canker of worldliness among the flowers. Unluckily for his chances of matrimony, the prettiest girls he had met hitherto had been the most worldly; trained perhaps to worldliness on account of their marketable qualities. Much as he admired high-mindedness in woman, he was not high-minded enough to seek out virtue under an unattractive exterior; so he had almost made up his mind to follow his uncle's example, and go through life a bachelor.