Soon after lunch on that day Florence went out alone to execute some small commissions for Mrs Fortescue. She was wearing a sealskin cap and very _chic_ little sealskin jacket. No one could look nicer than she did in her pretty and expensive dress, and nothing could become her radiant complexion and those changeful eyes of hers better than the sealskin cap, which revealed beneath its narrow brim just a touch of that bright chestnut hair which Lieutenant Reid thought of by day and dreamed of by night. It was only last night that he dreamed he was touching that hair and even kissing it and calling it his own. Now it was a queer dream, for his locks were harsh and, of course, very short, and although he had thick hair, it was not exactly beautiful. He could only have called Florence's chestnut locks his own in one sense. Somehow, as he lay in bed that morning and thought about the girl, he imagined himself more than ever in love with her. "I do care for her, quite independently of her money," he thought. "She is the happiest, happiest girl on earth, and the most beautiful. I always had a _penchant_ for her, but now I am in love with her." In love. He smiled to himself at the thought. He had read a lot about that passion which sometimes destroys a man's life, and sometimes blesses it, but which, when it is strong and all-enduring, has a very great effect either for good or for evil. Lieutenant Reid, as he luxuriously stretched himself in bed, thought it an agreeable feeling, and that those who talk about it exaggerate its importance a good deal. Of course he had had his fancies before now. He had liked to flirt like other men, but never, never before had he thought of any one as he thought of Florence. She was all that his fancy could desire-- A creature not too bright and good For human nature's daily food. For daily pleasures, simple wiles. Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. He was quite delighted with himself for remembering Wordsworth's ideal of the perfect woman, and said to himself that he must really be in love. He showed symptoms of the complaint that morning by not taking quite such a large breakfast as usual, and also by being strangely silent while Major Reid chatted on the invariable subjects which now interested him--those local matters which he as a magistrate of the peace was engaged in, viz the poachers in the neighbourhood, the state of the autumn crops, the distress amongst the poor, his own extremely light purse.