le terms, I've just heard.'

'But you need not hire any!' spoke up Charlotte. 'Paula would let you
shoot anything, I am sure. She has not been here long enough to preserve
much game, and the poachers had it all in Mr. Wilkins' time. But what
there is you might kill with pleasure to her.'

'No, thank you,' said De Stancy grimly. 'I prefer to remain a stranger
to Miss Power--Miss Steam-Power, she ought to be called--and to all her
possessions.'

Charlotte was subdued, and did not insist further; while Somerset,
before he could feel himself able to decide on the mood in which the
gallant captain's joke at Paula's expense should be taken, wondered
whether it were a married man or a bachelor who uttered it.

He had not been able to keep the question of De Stancy's domestic state
out of his head from the first moment of seeing him. Assuming De Stancy
to be a husband, he felt there might be some excuse for his remark; if
unmarried, Somerset liked the satire still better; in such circumstances
there was a relief in the thought that Captain De Stancy's prejudices
might be infinitely stronger than those of his sister or father.

'Going to-morrow, did you say, Mr. Somerset?' asked Miss De Stancy.
'Then will you dine with us to-day? My father is anxious that you
should do so before you go. I am sorry there will be only our own family
present to meet you; but you can leave as early as you wish.'

Her brother seconded the invitation, and Somerset promised, though his
leisure for that evening was short. He was in truth somewhat inclined
to like De Stancy; for though the captain had said nothing of any value
either on war, commerce, science, or art, he had seemed attractive
to the younger man. Beyond the natural interest a soldier has for
imaginative minds in the civil walks of life, De Stancy's occasional
manifestations of taedium vitae were too poetically shaped to
be repellent. Gallantry combined in him with a sort of ascetic
self-repression in a way that was curious. He was a dozen years older
than Somerset: his life had been passed in grooves remote from those of
Somerset's own life; and the latter decided that he would like to meet
the artillery officer again.

Bidding them a temporary farewell, he went away to Markton by a shorter
path than that pursued by the De Stancys, and after spending the
remainder of the afternoon preparing for departure, he sallied forth
just before the dinner-hour towards the suburban villa.

H