“No, I don’t think the Listers know him.”

“So much the better for them!  It is a vice to know him.  And you were not dull at Lidford?”

“Very far from it, Jack.  I was happier there than I have ever been in my life before.”

“Eh, Gil!” cried John Saltram; “that means something more than a quiet fortnight with a married sister.  Come, old fellow, I have a vested right to a share in all your secrets.”

“There is no secret, Jack.  Yes, I have fallen in love, if that’s what you mean, and am engaged.”

“So soon!  That’s rather quick work, isn’t it, dear boy?”

“I don’t think so.  What is that the poet says?—­’If not an Adam at his birth, he is no love at all.’  My passion sprang into life full-grown after an hour’s contemplation of a beautiful face in Lidford church.”

“Who is the lady?”

“O, her position is not worth speaking of.  She is the adopted niece of a half-pay captain—­an orphan, without money or connections.”

“Humph!” muttered John Saltram with the privileged candour of friendship; “not a very advantageous match for you, Gilbert, from a worldly point of view.”

“I have not considered the matter from that point of view.”

“And the lady is all that is charming, of course?”

“To my mind, yes.”

“Very young?”

“Nineteen.”

“Well, dear old follow, I wish you joy with all heartiness.  You can afford to marry whom you please, and are very right to let inclination and not interest govern your choice.  Whenever I tie myself in the bondage of matrimony, it will be to a lady who can pay my debts and set me on my legs for life.  Whether such a one will ever consider my ugly face a fair equivalent for her specie, is an open question.  You must introduce me to your future wife, Gilbert, on the first opportunity.  I shall be very anxious to discover whether your marriage will be likely to put an end to our friendship.”

“There is no fear of that, Jack.  That is a contingency never to arise.  I have told Marian a great deal about you already.  She knows that I owe my life to you, and she is prepared to value you as much as I do.”

“She is very good; but all wives promise that kind of thing before marriage.  And there is apt to come a day when the familiar bachelor friend falls under the domestic taboo, together with smoking in the drawing-room, brandy-and-soda, and other luxuries of the old, easy-going, single life.”

“Marian is not very likely to prove a domestic tyrant.  She is the gentlest dearest girl, and is very well used to bachelor habits in the person of her uncle.  I don’t believe she will ever extinguish our cigars, Jack, even in the drawing-room.  I look forward to the happiest home that ever a man possessed; and it would be no home of mine if you were not welcome and honoured in it.  I hope we shall spend many a summer evening on the lawn, Jack, with a bottle of Pomard or St. Julien between us, watching the drowsy old anglers in their punts, and the swift outriggers flashing past in the twilight.  I mean to find some snug little place by the river, you know, Saltram—­somewhere about Teddington, where the gardens slope down to the water’s edge.”