As Lionel was spinning along Piccadilly in his swift hansom, it occurred
to him that if Nina were going to join the "Squire's Daughter" company,
it might be just as well for her not to have any preconceived antipathy
against Miss Burgoyne. For Miss Burgoyne was an important person at the
New Theatre.




CHAPTER IV.

COUNTRY AND TOWN.


On this Sunday morning, when all the good people had gone to church,
there was no sign of life on these far-stretching Winstead Downs. The
yellow roads intersecting the undulations of black-and-golden gorse were
undisturbed by even a solitary tramp; so that Lionel Moore and his
friend Mangan, as they idly walked along, seemed to be the sole
possessors of the spacious landscape. It was a beautiful morning, warm
and clear and sunny; a southerly breeze stirred the adjacent elms into a
noise as of the sea, caused the chestnuts to wave their great branches
bearing thousands of milky minarets, and sent waves of shadows across
the silken gray-green of a field of rye. There was a windmill on a
distant height, its long arms motionless. A strip of Scotch firs stood
black and near at one portion of the horizon; but elsewhere the
successive lines of wood and hill faded away into the south, becoming of
a paler and paler hue until they disappeared in a silvery mist. The air
was sweet with the resinous scent of the furze. In short, it was a
perfect day in early June, on a wide, untenanted, high-lying Surrey