'And you all drank tea at the Abbey,' said Ida, musingly; 'dear old Abbey! I can fancy you there, in the long low library, with the afternoon sunlight shining in at the open windows, and Mary Stuart smiling at you from the panelling over one fire-place, and crafty Elizabeth looking sideways at you from over the other, and the Dijon roses clambering and twining round every lattice.' 'How well you remember the old place. Isn't it horrid of Brian to stay away all these years?' 'It is--rather eccentric.' 'Eccentric! It is positively wicked, when we know how agreeable he can make himself. Why, in that happy summer we spent at the Abbey he brightened all our lives. Didn't he, now, Ida?' 'He was very kind,' faltered Ida, like a slave giving evidence under torture. 'Have you heard from him lately?' 'Not for more than a year, but father hears of him through his London agent, and we know he is well. He sent us all lovely presents last Christmas--Indian shawls, prayer-rugs, ivories, carved sandalwood boxes. The Vicarage is glorified by his gifts.' The gong began booming and buzzing as Bessie pinned a big yellow rose among the folds of her Madras fichu, and Mrs. Jardine and her hostess went down to the drawing-room lovingly arms entwined, as in that long-ago holiday, when Ida was a guest at Kingthorpe. Lady Palliser and Mr. Jardine were in the drawing-room talking to each other, while Brian paced up and down the room, pale and wan, as he had looked yesterday in the church. He offered his arm to Bessie at his wife's bidding, without a word. Mr. Jardine followed, with Lady Palliser and Ida; and the little party of five sat down to dinner with a blight upon them, the awful shadow of domestic misery. There are many such dinners eaten every day in England--than which the Barmecide's was a more cheerful feast, a red herring and bread and butter in a garret a banquet of sweeter savour. For the first two courses Brian preserved a sullen silence. He ate nothing--did not even pretend to eat--and drank the sherry and soda-water which were offered to him without comment. With the third course the butler, who had supplied him with the prescribed amount of sherry, gave him plain soda-water. He looked at his tumbler for a moment or so, and burst out laughing. 'Byron used to drink soda-water at dinners when he was the rage in London society,' he said. 'It was _chic_, and Byron was like Sara Bernhardt--he would have done anything to get himself talked about.' 'I should have thought the fame he won by "Childe Harold" would have satisfied him, without any outside notoriety as a total abstainer,' said Mr. Jardine.