“Thank you, my lord, but we are too large a party.  We have three Vanderkist girls with us, and Anna and her brother are to join them to be with their sister.”

“Never mind, never mind.  The great hall will have room for all.”

Still Fernan demurred, knowing that Marilda had ordered dinner at the Quay Hotel, and that even liberal payment would not atone for missing the feasting of the millionaires; so the matter was compounded by his promise to bring all his party, who were not ready for bed, up to spend the evening.

And Geraldine perceived from Lady Rotherwood’s ceremonious politeness that she did not like it at all, though she never said so even to Lady Merrifield.

However, it was a very bright evening.  Gerald had sung himself into spirits, and then found Dolores, and retreated into the depths of the garden with her, explaining to her all about his sister, and declaring that his first object must be to rescue her; and then, unless his name was cleared, and he had to resume all his obligations, the new life would be open to him, and he had no fear of not succeeding as a journalist, or if not, a musical career was possible to him, as Dolores had now the opportunity of fully perceiving.  His sweet voice had indeed filled her with double enthusiasm.  She had her plan for lecturing, and that very morning she had received from her father permission to enter a ladies’ college, and the wherewithal.  She would qualify herself for lecturing by the time he had fixed his career; and they built their airy castles, not on earth, but on railroads and cycles, and revelled on them as happily as is common to lovers, whether in castle or in cottage.  Certainly if the prospect held out to her had been Vale Leston Priory, it would not have had the same zest; and when in the evening they joined the dinner-party, there was a wonderful look of purpose and of brightness on both their faces.  And Emilia, who had been looking for him all the afternoon to tell him, “Gerald, I am really going to be a nurse,” only got for answer an absent “Indeed!”

“Yes, at St. Roque’s.”

“I hope I shall never be a patient there,” he said, in his half-mocking tone.  “You’ll look jolly in the cap and apron.”

“I’m to be there all the time they are in America, and-—”

“Well, I wonder you don’t go and study the institutions.”

“But, Gerald—­”

His eye was wandering, and he sprang forward to give Dolores a flower that she had dropped.

Lancelot, knowing what was before Gerald, and having always regarded Vale Leston with something of the honours of Paradise, could not understand that joyous look of life, so unlike Gerald’s usual weary, passive expression.  He himself felt something of the depression that was apt to follow on musical enjoyment; he saw all the failures decidedly enough not to be gratified with the compliments he met on all sides, and “he bitterly thought on the morrow,” when he saw how Clement was getting animated over a discussion on Church matters, and how Geraldine was enjoying herself.  And as to that pretty Franceska, who had blossomed into the flower of the flock, he foresaw heart-break for her when he watched the Marchioness’s countenance on hearing that her son had accepted Sir Ferdinand’s invitation to cruise to-morrow in the yacht.