Hearing from Mr. Rhodes that he had walked the distance from town,
and had been to Copsley, Lady Dunstane invited him to follow the pony-
carriage thither, where he was fed and refreshed by a tea-breakfast,
as he preferred walking on tea, he said. 'I took the liberty to call
at Mrs. Warwick's house,' he informed her; 'the footman said she was
at Copsley. I found it on the map--I knew the directions--and started
about two in the morning. I wanted a walk.'

It was evident to her that he was one of the young squires bewitched whom
beautiful women are constantly enlisting. There was no concealment of
it, though he stirred a sad enviousness in the invalid lady by descanting
on the raptures of a walk out of London in the youngest light of day, and
on the common objects he had noticed along the roadside, and through the
woods, more sustaining, closer with nature than her compulsory feeding on
the cream of things.

'You are not fatigued?' she inquired, hoping for that confession at
least; but she pardoned his boyish vaunting to walk the distance back
without any fatigue at all.

He had a sweeter reward for his pains; and if the business of the
chronicler allowed him to become attached to pure throbbing felicity
wherever it is encountered, he might be diverted by the blissful
unexpectedness of good fortune befalling Mr. Arthur Rhodes in having
the honour to conduct Mrs. Warwick to town. No imagined happiness,
even in the heart of a young man of two and twenty, could have matched
it. He was by her side, hearing and seeing her, not less than four
hours. To add to his happiness, Lady Dunstane said she would be glad to
welcome him again. She thought him a pleasant specimen of the self-vowed
squire.