Melville fingered his cravat, and settled his chin in its place above it. "That little girl dressed as if she came out of Noah's ark is my sister! Come, you will have another opportunity of cultivating her acquaintance, and you want to call at the Palace, don't you?" "My mother charged me to do so; but there is no haste." "Oh, you had better not lose time, or you may not find your legs under the Bishop's mahogany. We live some miles out, you know." Mr. Arundel turned his head round twice to take a last look at the retreating figures, and then allowed Melville to tuck his arm in his, and walk down the cloisters with him to the Palace. Melville was in fact very anxious to show off his intimacy with Mr. Arundel to the bishop, for he could not hide from himself the fact that the ecclesiastical _elite_ of Wells had not paid him the attention he hoped to receive. The truth was that rumours of Melville's gay and careless life, and the anxiety he had given his father, had reached the ears of some in authority. Heads of colleges reported his behaviour at Oxford, and Melville had been sent down, not for what may be called serious offences; but still the character hung about him of a man who cared for nothing earnestly; reading or rowing, it was all alike. Nothing that Melville did was done with singleness of purpose, except, as his father sometimes said, with a sigh, "dress himself like a mountebank and copy London fashions." [Illustration] CHAPTER III. THE PALACE. The old baronial Palace of Wells, surrounded by its moat and reached by a drawbridge--not raised now as in olden times,--is in perfect harmony with the city in which it stands. In it, but not of it; for when once the gateway is passed, the near neighbourhood of the market-place is forgotten, such traffic as this little city knows is left behind; and the gardens of the Palace might well be supposed to be far from all human habitations, so complete is the repose which broods over it. Encircled by battlemented walls, and standing in a wide demesne, a stranger is at once struck with the unusual beauty of its surroundings. Mr. Arundel's admiration rather disconcerted his friend. "Come on, Arundel. Don't stare about like that; some of the family may be at the windows." But Mr. Arundel did not heed his friend's entreaty. "Come on; it is so like a country clodhopper to stand looking at a big house, as if you had never seen one before." "I never have seen one before, in the least like this big house," was the reply; "and what are those ruins? It is odd, Falconer, that you never prepared me for the beautiful things I was to find in Somersetshire." "It's a mighty damp place," Melville said. "Rheumatism and low fever haunt the servants' quarters, which are on a level with the moat; but, my dear fellow, do come on." "Can't we cross over to that old wall? It is like a glimpse of Paradise through there."