But before he could speak, she had vanished within her own door, just holding it open long enough to give him a laughing nod before it shut, and darkness closed with it on the gallery.
"A man would need to keep his head with that girl!" thought Captain Lodge, with tantalized amusement.

"But, my hat, what a beauty!" Meanwhile in the library downstairs a good deal of thinking was going on.
Lord Buntingford was taking more serious stock of his new duties than he had done yet.

As he walked, smoking, up and down, his thoughts were full of his poor little cousin Rachel Pitstone.

She had always been a favourite of his; and she had always known him better than any other person among his kinsfolk.

He had found it easy to tell her secrets, when nobody else could have dragged a word from him; and as a matter of fact she had known before she died practically all that there was to know about him.