He scorned poor Aunt Hester. She shrank from him, frightened by his harsh, blunt manners; she was afraid he led a sinful life in London. Aunt Mary had few doubts on the subject, and her comments made her sister tremble. She spoke of him as a most desirable husband for Maggie. “He will be a peer, my dear James. Lord Mount Rorke will never marry again. He is the acknowledged heir to the title and estates.” And the young man went as he came--full of himself, his clothes, his good looks; bumptious and arrogant, effusive in his love of his friends, and yet sincere. He looked out of the railway carriage window to seize a last look of the green, with its horse pond and its downs, and the cricketers all in white, running to and fro (young Meason had just made a three, and Sally was applauding). The porches of the Southdown Road he could just see over the fields, and Mr. Brooke's glass glittered amid the summer foliage. At that moment he loved the ugly little village, with its barren downs and all its anomalous aspects of town and country. He thought of his friends there, and his life appeared to be theirs, and theirs his, and he wished it might flow on for ever in this quiet place. He seemed to understand it all so well, and to love it all so dearly. He accepted it all, even its vulgarest aspects. Even pompous Berkins appeared to him under a tenderer light--the light of orange-flowers and married love. For Aunt Mary had smoothed away all difficulties, hirsute and monetary, and the wedding had been fixed for the autumn. The gaiety of the day he had spent with the girls, its feasting and its flirtation, arose, memorised in a soft halo of imagination--a day of fruit, wine, and light words, and the dear General, with his St James's politics and his only desire--“a little something to do--something to bring me out, you know.” The pugs, the mangy mastiff, the hospitable house always open, its ready welcome, and, above all, the air which it held of the lives of its occupants; its pictures of white arab horses, and elephants richly caparisoned; the wonderful goats in the field, and the tropical birds and animals in the back garden! Above all, the walks on the green with the chemist's wife, and the annoyance such familiarity caused Mr. Brookes--how funny, how charming, how amusing! He was smiling through the tears that rose to his eyes when the train rolled into Brighton. On arriving in London he drove straight to the Temple. The creaking, disjointed staircases, with the lanterns of old time in the windows, jarred his thoughts, which were still of Southwick; and when he entered his rooms their loneliness struck him with a chill. He pictured Maggie sitting in the arm-chair waiting for him, and he imagined how she would lay her book aside and say, “Oh, here you are!” He sat down to read his letters. One was from Lord Mount Rorke, enclosing a cheque, another a daintily cut envelope, smelling daintily, came from Lady Seveley.