Lady Cheriton was handsome still, with a grand Spanish beauty which time had touched lightly. She was tall and dignified in carriage, though a shade stouter than she could have wished, and she dressed to perfection with sobriety of colouring and richness of material. Her life had been full of pleasantness, her only sorrow being the loss of her infant sons, which she had not taken to heart so deeply as the proud father who had pined for an heir to his newly won honours. She had her daughter, her first-born, the child for whom her heart had first throbbed with the strange new love of maternity. She shed some natural tears for the boy-babies, and then she let Juanita fill their place in her heart, and her life again seemed complete in its sum of happiness. And now in this sleepy summer holiday—cut off from most things that she cared for—Juanita’s letters had been her chief joy—those happy, innocent, girlish letters, overflowing with fond, foolish praise of the husband she loved, letters made up of nothings—of what he had said to her, and what she had said to him—and where they had taken afternoon tea—and of their morning ride, or their evening walk, and of those plans for the long future which they were always making, projecting their thoughts into the time to come, and laying out those after years as if they were a certainty. There had been no fairer morning than that which followed the night of the murder. Lord Cheriton was an early riser at all seasons, most of all in the summer, when he was generally awake from five o’clock, and had to beguile an hour or so with one of the books on the table by his bed—a well-thumbed “Horace” or a duodecimo “Don Quixote,” in ten volumes, which went everywhere with him. By seven o’clock he was dressed, and ready to begin the day; and between that hour and breakfast it was his habit to attend to the correspondence which had accumulated during the previous day. This severe rule was suspended, however, at Paramé, and he gave himself up to restful vacuity, strolling up and down the sands, or walking round the walls of St. Malo, or sauntering into the cathedral in a casual way for an early mass, enjoying the atmosphere of the place, with its old-world flavour. On this particular morning he went no further than the sands, where he paced slowly to and fro in front of the long white terrace, hotel, and casino, heedless alike of Parisian idlesse coquetting with the crisp wavelets on the edge of the sea, and of the mounted officer yonder drilling his men upon the sandy flat towards St. Malo. He was in a mood for idleness, but with him, idleness was only a synonym for deep thought. He was meditating upon his only child’s future, and telling himself that he had done well for her.