ll.
The landscape was the same, and young men in all ages are very much
the same, so--although this one had merely arrived by train, and
walked from the nearest station--Mark Lavendar stopped and leaned over
the low wall when he came to the turn of the road, and looked down at
the river.

He boasted no war horse nor armour; none of the trappings of the older
world added to his distinction, and yet he was a very pleasing figure
of a man.

The gaunt brown face was quite hard and solemn in expression; ugly,
but not commonplace, for as a friend once said of him, "His eyes seem
to belong to another person." It was not this, but only that the eyes,
blue as Saint Veronica's flower, showed suddenly a different aspect of
the man, an unexpected tenderness that flatly contradicted the hard
features of his face. He looked very nice when he laughed too, so
that most people when they had found out the trick, tried to make him
laugh as often as possible.

"What a day! Heavens! what a lovely day," he said to himself as he
leaned on the low wall. "I want to be courting Amaryllis somewhere in
these woods, and instead I've got to go and talk business with that
old woman;" and he looked ruefully towards the Manor House; for this
was not his first visit by any means, and he knew only too well the
hours of boredom that awaited him. Mrs. de Tracy, strange to say, had
a soft side towards this young man, the son of her family solicitor.
Mark was invariably sent down by his father when there was any
business to be transacted at Stoke Revel. The older man was fond of a
good dinner, and hated circumlocution about affairs, and it was only
when a death in the family, or some other crucial event, made his
presence absolutely necessary that he came down himself. Mark was
sacrificed instead, and many a wearisome hour had he spent in that
house. However on this occasion he had been glad enough to get out of
London for a while; the country was divine, and even the de Tracy
business did not occupy the whole day. There would be hours on the
river; afternoons spent riding along those green lanes through which
he had just passed, where the banks were starred with little vivid
flowers. Mark had an almost childish delight in such beauty. He had
loitered on the way along, flung himself down on a bank for a few
minutes, and burying his face amongst the flowers, listened with a
smile upon his mouth to the birds that chirruped in the branches of
the oak above