Once more John Treverton drove round his late kinsman’s estate, and this second time, in the sweet spring weather, the farms, and homesteads, the meadows where the buttercups were beginning to show golden among the grass, the broad sweeps of arable land where the young corn was growing tall--seemed to him a hundredfold more fair than they had seemed in the winter. He felt a keener longing to be the master of all these things. It seemed to him as if no life could be so sweet as the life he might lead at Hazlehurst Manor, with Laura Malcolm for his wife. The life he might lead----if---- What was that ‘if’ which barred the way to perfect bliss? There was more than one obstacle, he told himself gloomily, as he paced the elm avenue on the London road, one evening at sunset, after he had been at Hazlehurst more than a week, during which week he had seen Laura very often. There was, among many questions, the doubt as to Laura’s liking for him. She might consider herself constrained to accept him, were he to offer himself, in deference to the wish of her adopted father; but could he ever feel sure that she really cared for him, that he was the one man upon earth whom she would choose for her husband? A flattering whisper which crept into the ear of his mind, like a caressing breath of summer wind gently fanning his cheek, told him that he was already something nearer and dearer to this sweet girl than the ruck of mankind; that her lovely hazel eyes took a new light and colour at his coming, that their beauty was shadowed with sadness in the moment of parting from him; that there were tender, broken tones of voice, fleeting blushes, half smiles, sudden droopings of darkly-fringed eyelids, and many other more subtle signs, that told of something more than common friendship. Believing this, what had he to do but snatch the prize? Alas! between him and the light and glory of life stood a dark, forbidding figure, a veiled face, an arm sternly extended to stop the way. ‘It is not to be thought of,’ he said to himself. ‘I honour her too much--yes, I love her too well. The estate must go, and she and I must go on our several ways in the wilderness of life--to meet by chance, perhaps, half-a-century hence, when we have grown old, and hardly remember each other.’ It was to be his last evening at Hazlehurst, and he was going to the Manor-house to bid Laura and her friend good-bye. A very simple act of politeness, assuredly, yet he hung back from the performance of it, and walked slowly up and down under the elm trees, smoking a meditative cigar, and chewing the cud of fancies which were mostly bitter.