Once he murmured the name of Elfride. Ah, there she was! On the lawn
in a plain dress, without hat or bonnet, running with a boy's
velocity, superadded to a girl's lightness, after a tame rabbit she
was endeavouring to capture, her strategic intonations of coaxing words
alternating with desperate rushes so much out of keeping with them, that
the hollowness of such expressions was but too evident to her pet, who
darted and dodged in carefully timed counterpart.

The scene down there was altogether different from that of the hills.
A thicket of shrubs and trees enclosed the favoured spot from the
wilderness without; even at this time of the year the grass was
luxuriant there. No wind blew inside the protecting belt of evergreens,
wasting its force upon the higher and stronger trees forming the outer
margin of the grove.

Then he heard a heavy person shuffling about in slippers, and calling
'Mr. Smith!' Smith proceeded to the study, and found Mr. Swancourt. The
young man expressed his gladness to see his host downstairs.

'Oh yes; I knew I should soon be right again. I have not made the
acquaintance of gout for more than two years, and it generally goes off
the second night. Well, where have you been this morning? I saw you come
in just now, I think!'

'Yes; I have been for a walk.'

'Start early?'

'Yes.'

'Very early, I think?'

'Yes, it was rather early.'

'Which way did you go? To the sea, I suppose. Everybody goes seaward.'

'No; I followed up the river as far as the park wall.'

'You are different from your kind. Well, I suppose such a wild place is
a novelty, and so tempted you out of bed?'

'Not altogether a novelty. I like it.'

The youth seemed averse to explanation.

'You must, you must; to go cock-watching the morning after a journey of
fourteen or sixteen hours. But there's no accounting for tastes, and
I am glad to see that yours are no meaner. After breakfast, but not
before, I shall be good for a ten miles' walk, Master Smith.'

Certainly there seemed nothing exaggerated in that assertion. Mr.
Swancourt by daylight showed himself to be a man who, in common with
the other two people under his roof, had really strong claims to be
considered handsome,--handsome, that is, in the sense in which the moon
is bright: the ravines and valleys which, on a close inspection, are
seen to diversify its surface being left out of the argument. His face
was of a tint that never deepened upon his cheeks n