"I have been tolerably comfortable with my aunt so far," she thought, "in spite of the spoons and forks; but now I shall only interfere with her enjoyment of this dreadful Scotchman's society. Oh, papa, papa, how I miss you, and the dreary little house on the Dyke Road, where we lived so peacefully together, with all the winds of heaven howling round us, and rattling our windows in the dead of the night!" She went under the ponderous archway beneath which a portcullis still hung, and into the grassy enclosure which had once been the muster-ground of the castle. At this early hour there were neither Sunday-school children nor exploring visitors among the old grey ruins. The fresh sea-breezes fluttered the little plume in Lady Cecil's hat, and blew all thoughts of vexation out of her mind. She mounted the winding stair of the keep--a dangerous, treacherous stair, which had been worn by the tread of mailed feet in the days that were gone, and the buff boots of excursionists from the Isle of Wight in this present age. She went to the very top of the great Norman tower, high up above all grievances about Hector Gordon and his breakfast, and emerged upon the battlements, a fragile, fluttering little figure, amid that massive mediæval stonework, whose grey ruin was grander than the most elaborate glories of modern architecture. She had heard the whistle of the engine as she entered the castle, and she imagined that at this moment Hector Gordon must be installed at the breakfast-table; "devouring chops," she thought, with a contemptuous little grimace. It is so natural for a girl of nineteen to think meanly of a man who is below her in social status. To Philip Foley, painting in his Highbury lodging, and dressed in a threadbare shooting-jacket, Lady Cecil Chudleigh would have been unspeakably gracious; but for a scion of the Caledonian plutocracy she had nothing but good-natured contempt. "He is an invalid, poor fellow," she thought; "I am sure it is very wicked of me to think his visit a bore." She settled matters with her conscience by determining to be very attentive to the physical comforts of her aunt's favourite. "I dare say he would like some salmon for dinner," she thought; "I'll call at the fishmonger's as I go home." And then she took a volume of Victor Hugo's poetry from her pocket, and began to read. The noble verse carried her aloft on its mighty pinions, high up into some mystic region a million miles above the battlements of the Norman tower. She had an idea that she could not leave her aunt and Captain Gordon too long undisturbed on this particular morning, and she abandoned herself altogether to the delight of her book. It was so seldom that she was able to entirely forget that there were such things as silver forks and dishonest servants in the world. Even to-day she was not allowed to be long unconscious of the outer world, for when she had been reading about twenty minutes she heard a voice close beside her exclaim: