If there was any special significance in her tone, Captain Gordon was too careless to be conscious of it. He walked to the open window, humming an Italian air from the last successful opera, and then he strolled out on the lawn, which was screened from the high road by a tall old-fashioned privet hedge and a modern bank of showy evergreens, across which the sea breezes blew fresh and cool. He was very happy, with an innocent, boyish happiness, as he paced to and fro upon the elastic turf, which seemed to spring under his light foot. In all his life he had never known any acute pain, any bitter grief. Of all possibilities in life the last thing which he could have imagined was that he had come to meet his first great sorrow here where he was happy in the planning of such simple pleasures as might have seemed insipid to a modern schoolboy. "What an old-fashioned fellow I am!" he thought, as he stopped with his hand in his pocket, searching for his cigar-case. "If any of my chums in the Eleventh knew that I was looking forward to a day's ramble in a rumbling old fly with a couple of women, I think they'd cut me dead ever afterwards; and yet they're not such a bad lot of fellows, after all; only there's not one of them has pluck enough to own he can enjoy himself." Captain Gordon had smoked out his cigar by the time the fly drove up to the garden gate. He threw the ash away, and shook the fumes of his cabana out of his hair and beard, and then went to meet the dowager and Lady Cecil; the dowager stately in black silk robes, which she possessed in all stages of splendour and shabbiness, and which she wore always, because it was "suitable for a person of my age, my dear, and by far the most economical thing one can wear," as she informed her confidantes. The Indian shawl--the shawl which the Captain had brought to Fortinbras in one of his port-manteaus--hung across Mrs. MacClaverhouse's arm, in compliment to the donor; and behind the widow came Cecil, in a pale muslin dress and scarf, and looking very lovely under the shelter of a broad Leghorn hat. They drove away in the bright summer sunshine, through country-lanes, where the breath of the sea came to them laden with the perfume of flowers; where rustic children ran out of cottage-doors to curtsey to them as they drove by, or even to set up a feeble cheer, as if the fly had been a triumphal chariot. The drive was a success; as, indeed, almost all things were on which Hector Gordon set his desire. Mrs. MacClaverhouse was radiant, for her inspection of the cheque had proved eminently satisfactory; Hector was delightful, throwing his whole heart and soul into the task of amusing his companions--gay with the consciousness of pleasing, and with the _insouciance_ of a man who has never known trouble; and if Lady Cecil was the most silent of the little party, it was only because she felt most deeply the delicious repose of the rustic scenery, the exquisite sweetness of the untainted atmosphere.