Life at Cheriton Chase bore no impress of the tragedy that had blighted Juanita’s honeymoon. There were no festivities this winter; there was no large house-party. There had been a few quiet elderly or middle-aged visitors during the shooting season, and there had been some slaughter of those pheasants which were wont to sit, ponderous and sleepy as barn-door fowls, upon the five-barred gates, and post-and-rail fences of the Chase. But even those sober guests—old friends of husband and wife—had all departed, and the house was empty of strangers when Theodore arrived there, in time for dinner on New Year’s Eve. Nothing could have suited him better than this. He wanted to be _tête-à-tête_ with Lord Cheriton; to glean all in the way of counsel or reminiscence that might fall from those wise lips. “If there is a man living who can teach me how to get on in my profession it is James Dalbrook,” he said to himself, thinking of his cousin by that name which he had so often heard his father use when talking of old days. Lady Cheriton greeted him affectionately, made him sit by her in the library, where a richly embroidered Japanese screen made a cosy corner by the fireplace, during the twenty minutes before dinner. She was a handsome woman still, with that grand-looking Spanish beauty which does not fade with youth, and she was dressed to perfection in lustreless black silk, relieved by the glitter of jet here and there, and by the soft white crape kerchief, worn _à la_ Marie-Antoinette. There was not one thread of grey in the rich black hair, piled in massive plaits upon the prettily shaped head. Theodore contemplated her with an almost worshipping admiration. It was Juanita’s face he saw in those classic lines. “I want to have a good talk with you, Theo,” she said; “there is no one else to whom I can talk so freely now my poor Godfrey is gone. We sit here of an evening, now, you see. The drawing-room is only used when there are people in the house, and even then I feel miserable there. I cannot get his image out of my mind. Cheriton insists that the room shall be used, that it shall not be made a haunted room—and no doubt it is best so,—but one cannot forget such a tragedy as that.” “I hope Juanita will forget some day.”