They were pleased to see the good-looking young man at Hardriggs, as he descended from the fly and joined the pre-luncheon croquet-party on the lawn. He had been there very recently, it is true; but good-looking young men are always welcome in country-houses, where indeed a fresh face, a fresh voice, a few fresh ideas, are priceless. Miles threw a hurried glance over the croquet-players. Miss Lambert was not amongst them. They were all young people, who, after the first greeting, returned to their game and its necessary accompaniment of flirtation. But Dean Asprey was seated under a "wide-spreading beech-tree," reading the _Times_, and he rose as he saw Miles approach, dropped the paper, and went to meet him. As the Dean approached, Miles could not help noticing his aristocratic appearance; could scarcely help smiling at the wonderful way in which the tailor had combined the fashionable and clerical element in his dress. "How do you do, my dear Mr. Challoner?" said Dean Asprey, in those bland mellifluous tones which had won so many hearts. "So delighted to see you here again! With only one fear tempering my pleasure, and that is that--believing you to be alone? yes, that is so?--the fear that my dear old friend Lord Sandilands is indisposed? Say I'm wrong, and set my fears at rest!" "I would gladly, Mr. Dean; but I cannot. Lord Sandilands has a sharp attack of the gout." "Of the gout? Well, well, I can recollect John Borlase these--ah, no matter how many years; too many to trouble to recollect--and the gout was the last complaint one would have ascribed to him." "Well, he has it tow, without a doubt. Dr. Bede of St. Leonards has seen him, and pronounced definitely in the matter. I have come over to ask Mrs. Bloxam, who is a very old friend of his, to go and see him." "Ay, ay, indeed! Mrs. Bloxam--a very charming and estimable person, by the way, and apparently well versed in many questions which, for females at least, would be considered abstruse--Mrs. Bloxam is in great request just now. Her young charge Miss Lambert is also ill, and--" "Miss Lambert ill!" cried Miles; "what is the matter?" "O, nothing of any consequence, I believe," replied the Dean. ("Charmingly ingenuous the youth of the present day," he said to himself: "he has at once revealed the reason of his coming over here again so soon, without having the smallest idea that he has done so.") "Nothing of any consequence; a trifling indisposition, a _migraine_, a _nichts_, which in anyone else would be thought nothing of, but which in Miss Lambert is naturally regarded with special interest. You know her, of course. I mean know to appreciate her, rather than know in the mere ordinary sense of acquaintance?"