‘I quite agree to that,’ he said, ’and, indeed, I see that you have managed her most wisely, and obtained her affection and gratitude, as indeed you have mine!’ he added, with a tone in his voice that touched Jane to the core of her heart.

‘I never heard anything like it before,’ she said to her sister over their fire at night, with a dew of pleasure in her eyes.

’I never liked Jasper so well before.  He is infinitely pleasanter and more amiable.  Do you remember our first visit?  No, it was not you who went with me, it was Emily.  I am sure he felt bound to be on guard all the time against any young officer’s attentions to his poor little sister-in-law,’ said Ada, with her Maid-of-Athens look.  ’The smallest approach brought those hawk’s eyes of his like a dart right through one’s backbone.  It all came back to me to-night, and the way he used to set poor Lily to scold me.’

’So that you rejoiced to be grown old.  I beg your pardon, but I did.  My experience was when I went to help Lily pack for foreign service, when I suppose my ferret look irritated him, for he snubbed me extensively, and I am sure he rejoiced to carry his wife out of reach of all the tribe.  I dare say I richly deserved it, but I hope we are all “mellered down,” as Wat Greenwood used to say of his brewery for the pigs.’

‘My dear, what a comparison!’

’Redolent of the Old Court, and of Lily, waiting for her swan’s nest among the reeds, till her stately warrior came, and made her day dreams earnest in a way that falls to the lot of few.  I don’t think his severity ever dismayed her for a moment, there was always such sweetness in it.

‘True knight and lady!  Yes.  He is grown handsomer than ever, too!’

’I hope he will get those poor children out of their hobble!  It is chivalrous enough of him to come down about it, in the midst of all his business in London.’

Sir Jasper started the next morning with Fergus on his way to school, getting on the road a good deal of information, mingled together about forms and strata, cricket and geology.  Leaving his little son at Mrs. Edgar’s door, he proceeded to Ivinghoe Terrace, where he waited long at the blistered door of the dilapidated house before the little maid informed him that Mr. Richard was gone out, and missus was so ill that she didn’t know as Miss White could see nobody; but she took his card and invited him to walk into the parlour, where the breakfast things were just left.

Down came Kalliope, with a wan face and eyes worn with sleeplessness, but a light of hope and gratitude flashing over her features as she met the kind eyes, and felt the firm hand of her father’s colonel, a sort of king in the eyes of all Royal Wardours.

‘My poor child,’ he said gently, ’I am come to see if I can help you.’

‘Oh! so good of you,’ and she squeezed his hand tightly, in the effort perhaps not to give way.