e is a certain amount of longing, and hope, and affection,
in Sir Mark's glance.

"At all events she will be in time for our ball," says Roger, "and,
besides that, there will be another element of amusement. Stephen Gower
is coming back to the Fens at last. She can get up a little flirtation
with him, and as he is a right-down good sort. I daresay, if I gave him
the right cue, he would take her off our hands for a little while."

"Is your friend coming?" says Dulce, with some surprise. "You never told
us. And that pretty place is to have a master at last? I am rather glad,
do you know; especially as he is a friend, too, of Fabian's."

"I have no friends," says Fabian, suddenly, with a small frown.

"Oh yes, you have, whether you like it or not," says Gore, quickly. "I
can swear to one at least. My dear fellow, this is one of your bad days;
come with me; a walk through the evening dews will restore you to reason
once more."

He passes his arm through Fabian's, and leads him down the balcony steps
into the dew-steeped gardens. A moan from the sea comes up to greet them
as they go. No other sound disturbs the calm of the evening air.

"I think Fabian has the most perfect face I ever saw," says Roger,
suddenly. But Portia makes no reply. She is watching Fabian's figure as
it disappears in the dusk. Dulce, however, turns quickly, and looks at
Roger, a strange gleam in her great, blue eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

"He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. I
speak unto the young, for I am of them, and always
shall be."--BAILEY.

SLOWLY, decorously, they march into church, one by one--Dulce first, and
then Sir Christopher, and then Julia Beaufort and Portia, and so on,
down to the children, who are evidently consumed with a desire to know
more than seems, and who are evincing a dangerous longing to waltz up
the smooth stone aisle.

The Boodie (who has not been overdrawn by Dulce and Roger, and who
really _is_ like an angel, with her sapphire eyes and corn-colored hair,
and the big white bonnet, with its blue bow, that surrounds her face
like a cloud) rather loses her presence of mind. It is either this, or a
sudden accession of ambition, that overcomes her, because, without a
moment's notice, she turns gently on her left heel, and executes a tiny
pirouette on her small Hessian boots. A frown from her mother suppresses
further evolutions, and, with a sigh, she returns to decorum and th