their novelty, at any rate. He
did not care very much for field-sports, and hunted and shot in a
jog-trot safe kind of way, with a view to the benefit of his health,
which savoured of old bachelorhood. And as for the rest of his
pleasures--the social rubber at his club, the Blackwall or Richmond
dinners--it seemed only custom that made them agreeable.

"If I had gone to the Bar, as I intended to do before my father's death,
I should have had an object in life," he thought, as he puffed slowly at
his cigar; "but a commercial man has nothing to hope for in the way of
fame--nothing to work for except money. I have a good mind to sell the
business, now that it is worth selling, and go in for the Bar after all,
late as it is."

He had thought of this more than once; but he knew the fancy was a
foolish one, and that his friends would laugh at him for his folly.

He was beyond the grounds of Lidford House by this time, sauntering
onward in the fair summer night; not indifferent to the calm loveliness
of the scene around him, only conscious that there was some void within
himself which these things could not fill. He walked along the road by
which he and his sister had come back from church, and turned into the
lane at the end of which Captain Sedgewick had bidden them good night. He
had been down this lane before to-night, and knew that it was one of the
prettiest walks about Lidford; so there was scarcely anything strange in
the fact that he should choose this promenade for his evening saunter.

The rustic way, wide enough for a wagon, and with sloping grassy banks,
and tall straggling hedges, full of dog-roses and honeysuckle, led
towards a river--a fair winding stream, which was one of the glories of
Lidford. A little before one came to the river, the lane opened upon a
green, where there was a mill, and a miller's cottage, a rustic inn, and
two or three other houses of more genteel pretensions.

Gilbert Fenton wondered which of these was the habitation of Captain
Sedgewick, concluding that the half-pay officer and his niece must needs
live in one of them. He reconnoitred them as he went by the low
garden-fences, over which he could see the pretty lawns and flower-beds,
with clusters of evergreens here and there, and a wealth of roses and
seringa. One of them, the prettiest and most secluded, was also the
smallest; a low white-walled cottage, with casement windows above, and
old-fashioned bow-windows below, and a porch