"Do you see that tall stout man, Cecil? No, not that one; the man nearest the lamp-post--the man who is blowing his nose? That's Bobbin, the great chancery-barrister--the man who----" And then, when Cecil had confronted the east wind, and strained her eyes to the uttermost, and ultimately had gazed reverentially on the wrong person, Mr. O'Boyneville went on to sing the praises of Bobbin; and a quarter of an hour afterwards poor Cecil had to twist her head in all manner of unpleasant positions, in order to behold a man in grey trousers and a brown overcoat, who turned out to be no other than the mighty Valentine, but who in outward aspect differed in no essential way from other men. Lady Cecil was not interested in Bobbin or Valentine. If Laurence O'Boyneville could have shown her Victor Hugo or Alfred Tennyson taking their constitutional on that pleasant sea-shore, she would have thought it no trouble to twist her head or strain her eyes in order to look upon them; though even then there is some probability that she would have been disappointed in the mortal habitations of those mighty souls. Was not Lavater disappointed in Goethe, and almost inclined to disbelieve that the handsome young stranger presented to him was indeed the author of _Werter_? After the conventional drive up and down the King's Road, Mr. O'Boyneville took his wife into bleak solitudes beyond Rottendean. They drove between bare hills, through a bit of lonely country, where there were little homesteads scattered far apart, with lights twinkling feebly in the twilight--a lonely barren bit of country, whose atmosphere on an October afternoon has a soothing influence on the mind. The dim grey downs, and the sheep feeding high up in the clear air, seem so very far away from all London care and turmoil. Both the barrister and his wife abandoned themselves to a contemplative mood during the long country drive; but after dinner they talked very pleasantly by the cheery fire, and Laurence forgot his red bag for once in a way, and became the man he had been during the brief holiday-time before his marriage--not very sentimental or metaphysical, but an agreeable companion nevertheless. "I think the holiday has done us both good," he said to his wife, as an early express bore them away from Brighton on Monday morning. Mr. O'Boyneville had persuaded Cecil to stay a few days longer at the Albion, promising to return and fetch her; but she did not care to stay at Brighton alone, with neither books nor music. "I wish we could oftener be away from Brunswick Square and your professional work, Laurence," she said, with her hand in her husband's big palm. She felt drawn nearer to him by that one day's holiday than by all the domestic routine of their Bloomsbury life. "Ah, my dear, that isn't possible," said the barrister, with a sigh of resignation.