And Patchey's pertinacity would have gained the day but for the interference of Colonel Sutherland, who got up hastily from the breakfast-table, with an exclamation very rare on his gentle lips, and threw open as wide as it would go the door of the dining-room. There outside stood Roger Musgrave, brown and manful, in his dark Rifleman's uniform, and restored to such a degree of self-confidence and social courage as became a man who had been living among his equals for a couple of years, who had earned his place, and made himself a modest degree of fame. He grasped the Colonel's hands in his own with an exuberant satisfaction, which the poor Squire of Tillington's penniless heir would not have ventured upon. He came in boldly, overflowing with honest gratitude and pleasure, secure of finding his place, and delighted to be "at home" once more. But Roger was suddenly interrupted, and struck dumb in his jubilant and rapid account of having been sent home with dispatches, and arriving suddenly without due time to warn his old friend of his approach. Susan rose from her place by the breakfast-table, and the young man lost his head and his tongue in an instant, scared by that formidable apparition. After a minute's interval, turning very red, and stammering out, "Miss Scarsdale?" Roger shyly approached the unlooked-for mistress of the house; while Susan on her part, with an equal blush, and a faltering exclamation of "Mr. Musgrave!" made an imperceptible step of advance, and gave her hand to Uncle Edward's "young friend." Uncle Edward himself, much amazed and amused by this pantomime, looked on till it was over. Then he covered the embarrassment of the young people in his own fashion by innumerable questions, which Roger was only too glad to answer; but Susan, mortified and troubled, and finding herself sadly in the way, could not but perceive that her presence was an effectual damp upon the stranger's high spirits, and had subdued him in the strangest fashion. How could it be? Susan took the earliest opportunity of leaving the room, dismayed at the influence she had unconsciously exercised, and more than half disposed to run upstairs to her own room and have a good cry over it. She had imagined to herself, perhaps, more than once, what might happen at this very arrival--but her thoughts had never pictured any such scene as this. When Susan had left the room, however, Roger's silence and diffidence, instead of lessening, rather increased; he followed her to the door with his eyes, and made a confused pause; and then he burst into the very middle of a little lecture upon strategy which the good Colonel was delivering to him, with the very inconsequent and illogical remark:-- "I was quite taken by surprise to see Miss Scarsdale here." "Why," said Colonel Sutherland, swallowing the affront to his own eloquence, "you knew Susan was my niece, did you not?"