he
Eddystone Light and entered the smooth waters of Plymouth Sound, there
was something within him that told him his heart had not quite
forgotten all its old memories.

CHAPTER XI.

TRANSFORMATION.

Captain Frank was everything and did everything that his parents could
have hoped for, except in one direction: he would have nothing said
about marriage. He came home without a murmur; he never uttered a word
of regret about his giving up a profession that he had fair hopes of
advancement in; he adopted his new set of duties with cheerfulness, and
entered with zest into the festivities of the season. For the leaf was
beginning to fall, and all the people about were preparing to shoot the
covers, so that parties had to be made up and invitations issued, and
there soon came to be a general stir throughout the countryside.
Captain Frank, though he was not much of a shot, took his share in all
these things; but he held aloof from womankind, and would not have his
marriage even spoken of by his most intimate relatives.

What was the man made of that he could resist a scene like this?
Imagine an open glade in a beautiful Wiltshire wood on the morning
after a slight fall of snow. The skies are blue, and the world is full
of clear sunlight; the hollies are intensely green over the white of
the snow; here and there on the bare branches are a few red leaves.
Also on the snow itself there is a stain of brownish red in some
places, where the light air of the morning has shaken down withered
needles from a tall pine-tree. Then there is a distant, sharp flutter;
the noise increases; suddenly a beautiful thing--a meteor of bronze and
crimson--comes whirring along at a tremendous pace; Captain Frank
blazes away with one barrel and misses; before he knows where he is the
pheasant seems a couple of miles off in the silver and blue of the sky,
and he does not care to send the second barrel on a roving commission.
He puts his gun over his shoulder, and returns to his pensive
contemplation of the glittering green hollies, and the white snow, and
the maze of bare branches going up into the blue.

But a new figure appears in the midst of this English-looking scene. A
very pretty young lady comes along smiling--her pink cheeks looking all
the pinker, and her blue eyes all the bluer, because of the white snow
and also the white fur round her neck. This is pretty Mary Coventry,
who is staying at present at Kingscourt. She has the