‘Dear Caterina, I think I hear voices,’ said Mr. Gilfil; ’they may be coming this way.’

She checked herself like one accustomed to conceal her emotions, and ran rapidly to the other end of the garden, where she seemed occupied in selecting a rose.  Presently Lady Cheverel entered, leaning on the arm of Captain Wybrow, and followed by Sir Christopher.  The party stopped to admire the tiers of geraniums near the gate; and in the mean time Caterina tripped back with a moss rose-bud in her hand, and, going up to Sir Christopher, said—­’There, Padroncello—­there is a nice rose for your button-hole.’

‘Ah, you black-eyed monkey,’ he said, fondly stroking her cheek; ’so you have been running off with Maynard, either to torment or coax him an inch or two deeper into love.  Come, come, I want you to sing us “Ho perduto” before we sit down to picquet.  Anthony goes tomorrow, you know; you must warble him into the right sentimental lover’s mood, that he may acquit himself well at Bath.’  He put her little arm under his, and calling to Lady Cheverel, ‘Come, Henrietta!’ led the way towards the house.

The party entered the drawing-room, which, with its oriel window, corresponded to the library in the other wing, and had also a flat ceiling heavy with carving and blazonry; but the window being unshaded, and the walls hung with full-length portraits of knights and dames in scarlet, white, and gold, it had not the sombre effect of the library.  Here hung the portrait of Sir Anthony Cheverel, who in the reign of Charles II. was the renovator of the family splendour, which had suffered some declension from the early brilliancy of that Chevreuil who came over with the Conqueror.  A very imposing personage was this Sir Anthony, standing with one arm akimbo, and one fine leg and foot advanced, evidently with a view to the gratification of his contemporaries and posterity.  You might have taken off his splendid peruke, and his scarlet cloak, which was thrown backward from his shoulders, without annihilating the dignity of his appearance.  And he had known how to choose a wife, too, for his lady, hanging opposite to him, with her sunny brown hair drawn away in bands from her mild grave face, and falling in two large rich curls on her snowy gently-sloping neck, which shamed the harsher hue and outline of her white satin robe, was a fit mother of ‘large-acred’ heirs.

In this room tea was served; and here, every evening, as regularly as the great clock in the court-yard with deliberate bass tones struck nine, Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel sat down to picquet until half-past ten, when Mr. Gilfil read prayers to the assembled household in the chapel.