Miss Darling looked at him with some surprise, and much approval of his modesty. So strongly did most of the young officers who came to her father's house lay down the law, and criticise even Napoleon's tactics. “How beautiful Springhaven must be looking now!” he said, after Dolly had offered her opinion, which she seldom long withheld. “The cottages must be quite covered with roses, whenever they are not too near the sea; and the trees at their best, full of leaves and blossoms, by the side of the brook that feeds them. All the rest of the coast is so hard and barren, and covered with chalk instead of grass, and the shore so straight and staring. But I have never been there at this time of year. How much you must enjoy it! Surely we ought to be able to see it, from this high ground somewhere.” “Yes, if you will ride to that shattered tree,” said Faith, “you will have a very fine view of all the valley. You can see round the corner of Foxhill there, which shuts out most of it just here. I think you have met our Captain Stubbard.” “Ah, I must not go now; I may be wanted at any moment”--Lord Dashville had very fine taste, but it was not the inanimate beauties of Springhaven that he cared a dash for--“and I fear that I could never see the roses there. I think there is nothing in all nature to compare with a rose--except one thing.” Faith had a lovely moss-rose in her hat--a rose just peeping through its lattice at mankind, before it should open and blush at them--and she knew what it was that he admired more than the sweetest rose that ever gemmed itself with dew. Lord Dashville had loved her, as she was frightened to remember, for more than a year, because he could not help it, being a young man of great common-sense, as well as fine taste, and some knowledge of the world. “He knows to which side his bread will be buttered,” Mr. Swipes had remarked, as a keen observer. “If 'a can only get Miss Faith, his bread 'll be buttered to both sides for life--his self to one side, and her to do the tother. The same as I told Mother Cloam--a man that knoweth his duty to head gardeners, as his noble lordship doth, the same know the differ atwixt Miss Faith--as fine a young 'ooman as ever looked into a pink--and that blow-away froth of a thing, Miss Dolly.” This fine young woman, to use the words of Mr. Swipes, coloured softly, at his noble lordship's gaze, to the tint of the rose-bud in her hat; and then spoke coldly to countervail her blush. “There is evidently something to be done directly. All the people are moving towards the middle of the down. We must not be so selfish as to keep you here, Lord Dashville.” “Why, don't you see what it is?” exclaimed Miss Dolly, hotly resenting the part of second fiddle; “they are going to have the grand march-past. These affairs always conclude with that. And we are in the worst part of the whole down for seeing it. Lord Dashville will tell us where we ought to go.”