see her brother. "I do not know what may
happen to him," she said in answer to her cousin's questions; "but
when he was passing out of my sight into the valley, I felt that I
was looking at him for the last time."

"That is simply what people call a presentiment," Alice replied.

"Exactly so; and presentiments, of course, mean nothing," said Kate.

Then they walked on towards the house without further speech; but
when they reached the end of the little path which led out of the
wood, on to the gravelled sweep before the front door, they were both
arrested by a sight that met their eyes. There was a man standing,
with a cigar in his mouth, before them, swinging a little cane,
and looking about him up at the wood. He had on his head a jaunty
little straw-hat, and he wore a jacket with brass buttons, and white
trousers. It was now nearly the middle of May, but the summer does
not come to Westmoreland so early as that, and the man, as he stood
there looking about him, seemed to be cold and almost uncomfortable.
He had not as yet seen the two girls, who stood at the end of the
walk, arrested by the sight of him. "Who is it?" asked Alice, in a
whisper.

"Captain Bellfield," said Kate, speaking with something very like
dismay in her voice.

"What! aunt Greenow's Captain?"

"Yes; aunt Greenow's Captain. I have been fearing this, and now, what
on earth are we to do with him? Look at him. That's what aunt Greenow
calls a sniff of the rocks and valleys."

The Captain began to move,--just to move, as though it were necessary
to do something to keep the life in his limbs. He had finished his
cigar, and looked at the end of it with manifest regret. As he threw
it away among a tuft of shrubs his eye fell upon the two ladies, and
he uttered a little exclamation. Then he came forward, waving his
little straw-hat in his hand, and made his salutation. "Miss Vavasor,
I am delighted," he said. "Miss Alice Vavasor, if I am not mistaken?
I have been commissioned by my dear friend Mrs Greenow to go out and
seek you, but, upon my word, the woods looked so black that I did not
dare to venture;--and then, of course, I shouldn't have found you."

Kate put out her left hand, and then introduced her cousin to the
Captain. Again he waved his little straw-hat, and strove to bear
himself as though he were at home and comfortable. But he failed,
and it was manifest that he failed. He was not the Bellfield who had
conquered Mr Cheesacre on the