Sir Richard rode on, his mind full of his elder son's valor. He should be thinking about marriage, though. It was time to see a grandson at the Hall. One was apt to forget how fast the years were going by. How old was John now? Thirty. So he was, by gad, thirty. Yes, he must be getting married. Not much difficulty about that, the proud father laughed to himself. Handsome, brave, the heir to Barton Flowers! It was right that he should take his profession seriously, but after the Crimea and the Mutiny he could claim to have served his country well, could afford to sell out and prepare himself to administer the property he would one day inherit. One day ... but not just yet. "No, not just yet," Sir Richard murmured, gripping the flanks of the gray horse tightly in pride of his own strength. And perhaps at this moment when the electric telegram was almost daily bringing news of French victories in Italy, and when that rascal Napoleon might be forming who knows what schemes to invade England, yes, perhaps at this moment, Captain John Flower should stick to his guns. Still, he would talk to his wife about the boy's marriage. He hoped that when he arrived home again he should find that headache sufficiently improved to let her discuss the subject with keenness and intelligence. The right plan was to invite some eligible young women to visit the Hall during John's next furlough, and if luck should station him at Aldershot to take care that whenever he drove over to Barton he should find an attraction at home. Luckily there were plenty of eligible young women in the neighborhood. Sir Richard was enumerating the possible wives for his heir when the disquieting thought occurred to him that John, like his father before him, might look beyond Hampshire for a wife. Not that for a single moment he had regretted his own choice; but what might be done once with success might end in disaster if fortune were tempted again. Anybody who had been made aware of Sir Richard's thoughts at this moment might have been pardoned for supposing that he had found a wife of beauty, merit, and ability in a lower stratum of society. As a matter of fact, the present Lady Flower was the daughter of one of Wellington's most gallant officers and a French lady of rank whose father had taken refuge from the Terror in England, where he had preferred to remain during the Napoleonic tyranny. It was the French blood that made Sir Richard feel he was committing a breach of tradition in marrying Miss Helen Baxter. To have introduced French blood into the Flowers, notwithstanding the pride of the family in their Norman origin, still seemed to him an astonishing piece of audacity; and even now he could shudder to think what his father would have said, had his father been alive when he married. Yet his wedded life had been one of unbroken happiness, and Helen had not betrayed the least sign of her mixed origin unless perhaps in an incurable