His acceptance of their renewed invitation gave evident pleasure to the Colonel and Miss Tancred and very little annoyance to himself. He had grown used to Coton Manor as a prisoner grows used to his cell. He had, as he had feared, tied himself to the place by beginning serious work in it. He was too well pleased with his landscape studies of the neighborhood to leave them unfinished; and, as it happened, he had plenty of time to give to them, for the Colonel was pretty constantly engaged with Mrs. Fazakerly. (Here again he traced the delicate hand of that lady. She had seen that, if any guest was to remain at Coton Manor, a limit must be put to the Colonel's opportunities for tormenting him.) Durant had ceased to long for distraction; he was sufficiently entertained by the situation itself. X If he had been on the lookout for distraction, he would have found it in Georgie Chatterton. At Miss Tancred's request he went with her to the station to meet the expected guest. It was evidently thought that his presence would break the shock of her arrival. It proved an unnecessary precaution. The young girl presented a smiling face at the carriage window--the Tancred face, somewhat obscured by a mass of irrelevant detail, sandy hair, freckles, a sanguine complexion, and so on. She jumped out on to the platform with a joyous cry of "Fridah!" She embraced "Fridah" impetuously, and then kept her a moment at arm's length, examining her dubiously. "You don't seem a bit glad to see me," was her verdict. She smiled gaily at Durant, and held out a friendly hand. All the way up from the station she conversed with them in a light-hearted manner. Thus:-- "What do you people do down here?" "Ask Mr. Durant; he'll tell you that we vegetate all day and play whist all night." "Oh, do you? Well, you know, I shan't. My goodness, Frida! is that your house? Whatever is it like? A Unitarian chapel, or the Carlton Club, or, stop a bit--you don't bury people in it, do you?" Then, as it occurred to her that she might have hurt her cousin's feelings by her last suggestion, she added, "It's rather a jolly old mausoleum, though. I wonder what it's like inside."