"I told you how it would be, Mr. Hardinge," whispered Dora; "that the staple conversation of the gentlemen, if it didn't run on the county pack, would be about horses and cattle, sheep, horned and South Down; or on the British Constitution, which must be a very patched invention, to judge by all they say of it." I confessed inwardly that much of what went on around me was so provincial and local--the bishop's visitation, the--parish poor, crops and game, grouse and turnips--and proved such boredom that, but for the smiling girl beside me, with her waggish eyes and pretty ways, and the longing and hope to have more of the society of Lady Estelle, I could have wished myself back at the mess of the depôt battalion in Winchester. Yet this restlessness was ungrateful; for Craigaderyn was as much a home to me as if I had been a son of the house, and times there were when the girls, like their father, called me simply "Harry," by my Christian name. The long and stately dining-room, like other parts of the house, was well hung with portraits. At one end was a full-length of Sir Madoc in his scarlet coat and yellow-topped boots, seated on his favourite bay mare, "Irish Jumper," with mane and reins in hand, a brass horn slung over his shoulder, and looking every inch like what he was--the M.F.H. of the county, trotting to cover. Opposite, of course, was his lady--it might almost have passed for a likeness of Winifred--done several years ago, her dress of puce velvet cut low to show her beautiful outline, but otherwise very full indeed, as she leaned in the approved fashion against a vase full of impossible flowers beside a column and draped curtain, in what seemed a windy and draughty staircase, a view of Snowdon in the distance. "Breed and blood," as Sir Madoc used to say, "in every line of her portrait, from the bridge of her nose to the heel of her slipper;" for she was a lineal descendant of _y Marchog gwyllt o' Cae Hywel_, or "the wild Knight of Caehowel," a circumstance he valued more than all her personal merits and goodness of heart. Some of Dora's remarks about the family portraits elicited an occasional glance of reprehension from the Dowager of Naseby, who thought such relics or evidences of descent were not to be treated lightly. On my enquiring who that lady in the very low dress with the somewhat dishevelled hair was, I had for answer, "A great favourite of Charles II., Mr. Hardinge--an ancestress of ours. Papa knows her name. There was some lively scandal about her, of course. And that is her brother beside her--he in the rose-coloured doublet and black wig. He was killed in a duel about a young lady--run clean through the heart by one of the Wynnes of Llanrhaidr, at the Ring in Hyde Park." "When men risked their lives so, love must have been very earnest in those days," said Lady Estelle. "And very fearful," said the gentler Winny. "It is said the lady's name was engraved on the blade of the sword that slew him."