His residence in a sequestered parish in the country afforded him few opportunities of visiting where ladies were to be met; and being fond of all sports and manly exercises, and so ripe a scholar as to find study and the chase a pleasant relief to each other, he had not as yet been careful to seek opportunities of increasing his female acquaintance. Whatever there was of silent and maidenly reserve in sweet Katharine herself towards common strangers, and upon ordinary occasions, vanished at a time like this, in the presence of so manly, so modest, and so frank a man as George Juxon. As the family sat that day at table, not a shade of embarrassment was visible in any of the party:--Sir Oliver was in high good humour; the boy Arthur looked at their guest with those honest eyes which, in boyhood, fear not to show either like or dislike; and the little girl Lily, permitted that day to dine in the hall, sat without shyness opposite to Juxon, and shunned not his smile or his word of notice. The day wore on:--he walked with the ladies upon the verdant and velvet paths in the flower garden,--he paced the terrace with Sir Oliver,--and his presence was felt by them all as a strength and a comfort. The shade upon the dial had stole silently, but swiftly, forwards, and touched upon seven in the evening, when he ran up to the chamber of Cuthbert to press his hand at parting; and having afterwards said his farewell to the ladies on the lawn, he descended to the court-yard, accompanied by Sir Oliver and the boy Arthur, mounted the gallant roan gelding upon which he had hunted his way down on the morning of yesterday, and again shaking the hand of his host, and accepting a warm invitation to repeat his visit soon and often, George Juxon rode out of the gates at Milverton with a very new and strange feeling. The free animal, on which he rode, was impatiently checked as often as it broke from the measured walk at which it was now the pleasure of his master to travel homewards; and, whatever might be the cause, he was not allowed to perform in less than two hours a distance to be very easily accomplished within one. The reverie of Juxon was unbroken during the whole ride. The evening was mild, and the hedgerows were green, and the air was perfumed here with the scent of violets, there with the fragrance of cottage gardens or blushing orchards, and upon the woody or open parts of the road with the rich incense of the fresh-blown May.