His old friend received him with his accustomed warmth, talked about the length of time he had been away, and rallied him on the probable cause of his detention. "I know, my dear boy!" said Lord Sandilands; "I know all about what you're going to tell me,--the pleasure a man feels in his own _terre_; the delightful days you used to have with Sir Peter's pack; the unequalled cover-shooting, and all the rest of it. Those things don't keep a young man down in the country, leading that frightful dead-alive existence which we try to think pleasant. I know all about it; and I know that there's nothing more horrible. There must be _beaux yeux_ somewhere, when a man voluntarily accepts that kind of life; and, by Jove! it's a kind of life to make one find the most ordinary eyes _beaux_. That confounded country life has produced more _mésalliances_, and more--hem! What are you going to do with yourself to-day?" The old nobleman stopped his discourse abruptly; with the reflection, perhaps, that _mésalliances_ scarcely fitted him for a theme. Answering him, Miles said that he had nothing to do, and that he was entirely at his friend's disposal. "Then," said Lord Sandilands, "suppose we stroll out Bayswater way? You have not seen Miss Lambert for a long time now, though you know--for I wrote to you, and you must have heard in a hundred other places--of her success. Really, the greatest thing for years. Everybody enchanted; and, best of all, has not made the smallest difference in her; just the same unaffected, quiet, unpretending girl as when we met her that first night--don't you recollect?--at Carabas House." They walked across Kensington-gardens and speedily reached the bye-road in which Miss Lambert's pretty villa was situated. Up and down this road, fretting against the slowness of the pace allowed them, stepping grandly, and sending the foam in flying flakes around them, were a pair of horses in a handsome mail-phaeton, driven by a correctly-appointed groom. "Mr. Munns here!" said Lord Sandilands testily, as this sight broke upon him. "Horribly vexing, when we hoped to have the young lady all to ourselves, eh, Miles? A worthy man, Mr. Munns, but a dreadful vulgarian. Tell me, is it my shortsightedness, or has this fellow really mounted a cockade in his man's hat?" "There certainly is a cockade in the man's hat," said Miles, with a smile which died away as, on a nearer approach, he added, "and a coronet on the harness." "A coronet? Why, the man can never hare been ass enough to--eh? O dear me, impossible! Who's phaeton's that, sir, eh?" "Earl of Ticehurst's, my lord!" said the groom, touching his hat; "lordship's in there, my lord," pointing to the villa with his whip, "with her ladyship." "With her ladyship!" echoed Lord Sandilands in bewilderment. "Let us go in, Miles, and see what it all means."