you speak. My night was terrible,
and no such aurora as yourself was in my troubled dream at dawn." Sydney
looked over at the Duchess, fancying this speech was rather nicely
turned; but her Grace was quite impassive, and evidently maintaining a
sort of conversational armed neutrality.

"Oh, Mr. Sydney, you should have more care of yourself, or I fear the
day will come when you will dine no longer, but merely sit up and take
nourishment. Now, we expect you to be so funny at luncheon."

Sydney began to be offended thinking this too flippant treatment of a
man of his position. Meantime Maggie Windsor had been asking Dacre about
the beauty. "She told me last night she was a very old friend of Lord
Brompton's?"

"Yes, I believe she was. I fancy even there may have been some childish
love affair between them." Dacre spoke bluntly, as usual. Love affairs
had found no place in Dacre's mind; his only thought was his country and
his King; and he spoke with little consciousness of the individual human
life his words might wound.

"Look there!" cried Sydney, "there is Goodwood House." Geoffrey looked
across the park (they had gone down the hill, through the wood, and were
now in the open again) and saw a great, rambling house, the central part
of white stone, with two semicircular bays. This part was evidently old,
but long brick wings were added of more modern construction. "The county
has bought it for a lunatic asylum, I hear from Jawkins," said the wit
grimly.

"Where is the Duke of Richmond?" asked Geoffrey. "Still in Russia?"

"Giving boxing lessons," said Dacre.

The rest of the ride was made in silence. They went down through a
valley naturally fertile. None of the large older houses seemed to be
occupied, but were falling into waste. Early in the afternoon they drew
up at Chichester Cathedral, among the ruins of which they were to lunch.
The grooms took the horses off to an inn in the little village near by,
and Jawkins's man proceeded to unpack the hampers.

For some reason, Miss Windsor avoided Geoffrey. The Duchess and Sir John
sat silently beside one another; Ripon was left to Mrs. Carey. It was a
pretty picnic; but the party did not seem to enjoy it very much. From
the Chichester ruin the roof has quite disappeared, but the pointed
arches of the nave still stand; and these and the flying buttresses of
the choir make a half inclosure of the place, into which the sunlight
breaks and slants like broken bars of m