“I enjoy travelling very much,” she told the young man, after she had furnished him with these details of her uncle’s biography. “But my happiest time is at Effington with the dear dogs and horses. I know everybody in the place, and the hours seem to go as if they were minutes.” “You seem to me rather a lucky girl,” remarked her companion, “and I expect you are spoiled by both uncle and aunt.” Miss Stormont admitted with a pretty smile that he was not very far out in his guess. Howard Stormont was one of the most generous and easy-going men alive, and nobody could be more indulgent towards youth than Mrs. Barnard. She was very young in spirit herself, and preferred the society of her juniors to more staid company. They indulged her in every reasonable wish, and kept open house and practised an almost lavish hospitality. No wonder, thought Lydon, that the county had taken them to its bosom. And although Craig had conceived a quite pronounced dislike for both the man and his sister, Lydon, less fastidious and critical, thought them very delightful people. Stormont was probably a self-made man, but he detected in neither him nor his sister any offensive signs of the newly-rich. He was not a snob, as affable to a waiter as he would have been to a duke, and never bragged. Mrs. Barnard was perhaps a trifle too flamboyant and juvenile in her attire for a woman of her years, but this, after all, was a very venial weakness. The tall, elegant girl he considered perfection; he could not see in her anything that he would have wished altered. And so she was the adopted daughter of a wealthy man! It was not much use allowing his feelings to stray in that direction. Howard Stormont would certainly have different views for her future. His friend Craig perhaps, with that fine old family record behind him, might have been considered favourably. But what had he, Leonard Lydon, a man of moderate income and no particular position, to offer such a peerless girl? Better put the idea out of his head with the least possible delay. Still, it was very delightful sitting there and chatting to her. She talked to him as if she had known him for years, and there was not the faintest symptom of coquetry about her. She seemed a perfectly frank and open girl and quite free from conceit, unconscious that her undeniable personal charms were bound to work havoc on the opposite sex. She was not one of those sophisticated modern maidens who are always out for conquest and admiration. They sat there for a long time, as neither Howard nor his sister reappeared. Presently Craig returned from his mysterious visit and came into the lounge in search of his friend. It struck Lydon, who could read him more easily than most people, that, in spite of the urbane mask which he so rarely removed, he was preoccupied and gloomy.