lor dinners--bien entender--for Mrs. Richards is an excellent
housekeeper."

Assured and satisfied that all would go well, she left London. She
hesitated as to whether she should give her son any warning about love
or marriage, then decided that it would be quite useless.

"The boy is naturally so fastidious and refined," she thought; "he will
never love beneath him. He will see no one so nice as Marion."

So Lady Hildegarde Carruthers went to her stately home, little dreaming
of the fatal news that was to follow her.

Basil cared little for the fashions and frivolities of the day; Colonel
Mostyn tried to laugh him out of his romantic and chivalrous ideas.

"You are behind the age, Basil--quite unfit for it," he would say to
him. "Chevalier Bayard would not be appreciated in these times."

He listened with a smile on his face, while the young man talked of
something to do--some grand action to fill up his life, some heroic deed
with which to crown himself.

"Utopian, Basil--all those are Utopian ideas. Progress is the order of
the day."

"Is there nothing?" asked Basil, "no way in which a man may distinguish
himself after the fashion of the heroes of old?"

The colonel smiled sarcastically.

"My dear boy," he said, "between ourselves, some of those heroes of
yours were unmitigated ruffians, I hardly like to give utterance to such
a sentiment, yet I believe it. You cannot defend a bridge after the
fashion of Horatius--you cannot conquer worlds like Alexander. I fancy
you will have to be content with being one of the best lords of the
manor Rutsford has ever known."

"You are sentimental, Basil," he said to him one morning, "but not
practical. A man is nothing unless he is practical. Why not give up all
these foolish notions of being a great hero? Go down to Ulverston,
build schools, almhouses, mechanics' institutes and all that kind of
thing. Marry and bring up your family to fear God and serve the queen.
One ounce of such practice is worth all the theory in the world."

But Basil could not see it--he longed for the unattainable, the ideal.
What lay plainly before him was a matter of great indifference to him.

Colonel Mostyn, the keen, cynical man of the world, was, perhaps, the
best companion he could have had. But the colonel had many anxious
thoughts over him. At last an idea struck him.

"The finest thing that could happen to Basil would be a very decided
flirtation with a beautiful, worldly woman, w