Unnoticed by them, the sky had been clearing gradually, the mists sweeping, dissolving, away; a breath of wind now wafted them, like a veil thrown aside, from hill and valley and lake, and a scene of unparalleled beauty lay revealed beneath them.  The great lake shone like a sapphire; meadows of emerald, woods of darker green, hills of purple and grey, silver and gold, rose from the bosom and the edge of the great liquid jewel; the hills towering tier on tier into the heavens of azure blue swept by clouds like drifting snow.

The two men gazed in silence; even Pottinger, to whom his ’osses generally represented all that was beautiful in nature, gaped with wide-open mouth.

“How’s that for lofty, you unbeliever?” demanded Stafford.  “Ever seen anything like that before?”

Howard had been considerably startled, but, of course, he concealed his amazed admiration behind a mask of cynicism.

“Rather a crib from Val Prinsep, isn’t it, with a suggestion of a Drury Lane pantomime about it?  Good heavens!  And there’s the Fairy Palace all complete,” he added, as, the mists still rising, was discovered on the slope of the other side a long and extremely ornate building, the pure whiteness of which was reflected in the marvellous blue and opal of the lake.  “Can that be Sir Stephen’s ’little place’?”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Stafford.  “It looks like the governor,” he added, with a touch of gravity.

“Well, it’s very big, or, rather, long; and it’s very white, but one’s bound to admit that it doesn’t spoil the landscape,” said Howard; “in fact, standing there amidst the dark-green trees, with its pinnacles and terraces, it’s rather an ornament than otherwise.  I suppose there are flowers on those velvety lawns; and the interior, I’ll wager my life, matches the exterior.  Fortunate youth to possess a Croesus for a father:” 

“Yes; I suppose the governor must be tremendously oafish,” said Stafford.

“The man who can build such a palace as that, and have the cool cheek to call it ‘a little place,’ must in common decency be a multi-millionaire.”

Stafford nodded and smoked thoughtfully for a minute as Pottinger left the horses’ heads and climbed into his seat behind, and the mail-phaeton moved along the road, which began to dip down at this point.

“I know so little about my father,” he said again.

“And yet the world knows so much,” remarked Howard, throwing open his waterproof and basking in the sun which shone as warmly and unreservedly as if it had never heard of such a thing as rain.  “One can’t take up the paper without seeing some mention of Sir Stephen Orme’s great name.  One day he is in Paris negotiating a state loan; another you read he is annexing, appropriating, or whatever you call it, a vast tract in Africa or Asia; on the third you are informed with all solemnity that he has become director of a new bank, insurance company,