"Oh, don't mention that, sir," said La Fleur, who had risen the moment she saw him, and now stood with her head on one side, her eyes cast down, and a long smile on her face. "That dinner was nothing to what I shall give you when Miss Miriam has sent for some things from the town which I want. And as for the steak, I beg you will not judge me until I have got for myself the cuts I want from the butcher. Then you shall see, sir, what I can do for you. In a beautiful home like this, Mr. Haverley, the cooking should be of the noblest and best." Ralph laughed. "So long as you stay with us, La Fleur," he said, "I am sure Cobhurst will have all it deserves in that respect." "Thank you very much, sir," she said, dropping a little courtesy. Then, raising her eyes, she cast them over the landscape and bent them again with a little sigh. "You are a gentleman of feeling, Mr. Haverley," she said, "and can understand the feelings of another, even if she be an old woman and a cook, and I know you can comprehend my sentiments when I find myself again serving my most gracious former mistress Mrs. Drane, and her lovely daughter, whose beautiful qualities of mind and soul it does not become me to speak of to you, sir. They were most kind to me when I first came to this country, she and her daughter, two angels, sir, whom I would serve forever. Do not think, sir, that I would not gladly serve you and your lady sister, but they are above all. It was last night, sir, as I sat looking out of my window at the beautiful trees in the moonlight, and I have not seen such trees in the moonlight since I lived in the Isle of Wight at Lord Monkley's country house there; La Fleur was his chef, and I was only there on a visit, because at that time I was attending to the education of my boy, who died a year afterward; and I thought then, sir, looking out at the moonlight, that I would go with the Dranes wherever they might go, and I would live with them wherever they might live; that I would serve them always with the best I could do, and that none could do better. But I beg your pardon, sir, for standing here, and talking in this way, sir," and with a little courtesy and with her head more on one side and more bowed down, she shuffled away. "Now then," said she to herself, as she entered the kitchen, "if I have given him a notion of a wife with a first-class cook attached, it is a good bit of work to begin with." CHAPTER XXXIV A PLAN WHICH SEEMS TO SUIT EVERYBODY