How wild and inconceivable, abrupt, yet quite practicable, were the brilliant visions I drew, the projects I formed! Mentally I sprang over all barriers, cleared at a flying leap every obstacle. In fancy I achieved all my desires. I was the husband of Estelle; the chosen son-in-law of her mother--the man of all men to whom she would have entrusted the future happiness of her only daughter. The good old lady had sacrificed pride, ambition, and all to love. Time, life-usage, all became subservient to me when in these victorious moods. I had distanced all rivals--she was mine; I hers. I had cut the service, bidden farewell to the Royal Welsh; she, for a time at least, to London, the court, the Row, "society," the world itself for me; and were rusticating hand-in-hand, amid the woods of Walcot Park, or somewhere else, of which I had a very vague idea. But from these daydreams I had to rouse myself to the knowledge that, so far from being accepted, I had not yet ventured to propose; that I had more than one formidable rival; that other obstacles were to be overcome; and that Lady Naseby was as cold and proud and unapproachable as ever.

The day of Dora's fête proved a lovely one. The merry little creature--for she was much less in stature than her elder sister--with her bright blue eyes and wealth of golden hair, was full of smiles, pleasure, and impatience; and was as radiant with gems, the gifts of friends, as a young bride. I welcomed the day with vague hopes that grew into confidence, though I could scarcely foresee how it was to close for me, or all that was to happen. Though Caradoc and I had come from Winchester ostensibly to attend this fête, I must glance briefly at many of the details of it, and confine myself almost to the dramatis person?. Suffice it to say that there was a militia band on one of the flower-terraces; there was a pretty dark-eyed Welsh gipsy, with black, dishevelled hair, who told fortunes, and picked up, but omitted to restore, certain stray spoons and forks; there was an itinerant Welsh harper, whom the staghound Brach, the same stately animal which I had seen on the rug before the hall-fire, inspired by that animosity which all dogs seem to have for mendicants, assailed about the calf of the leg, for which he seemed to have a particular fancy. So Sir Madoc had to plaster the bite with a fifty-pound note. Then there was a prophetic hermit, in a moss-covered grotto, cloaked like a gray friar, and bearded like the pard; a wizard yclept Merlin, who, having imbibed too much brandy, made a great muddle of the predictions and couplets so carefully entrusted to him for judicious utterance; and who assigned the initials of Lady Estelle Cressingham to the portly old vicar, as those of his future spouse, and those of his lady, a stout matron with eight bantlings, to me, and so on.

The company poured in fast; and after being duly received by Sir Madoc and Miss Lloyd in the great drawing-room, literally crowded all the beautiful grounds, the band in white uniform on the terrace being a rival attraction to the great refreshment tent or marquee--a stately polychromed edifice, with gilt bells hanging from each point of the vandyked edging--wherein a standing luncheon was arranged, under the care of Owen Gwyllim; and over all floated a great banner, ermine and pean, with the lion rampant of the Lloyds. A ball was to follow in the evening. The floor of the old dining-hall had been waxed till it shone like glass for the dancers. Its walls were hung with evergreens and coloured lamps, and a select few were invited; but Fate ordained that neither Lady Estelle nor I were to figure in this, the closing portion of the festivities. A number of beautiful girls in charming toilettes were present. People of the best style, too, mingled with humble middle-class country folks--tenants and so forth. There were some officers from the detachments quartered in Chester, and several little half-known parsons, in Noah's-ark coats, who came sidling in, and intrenched themselves beside huge mammas in quiet corners, to discuss parish matters and general philanthropy through the medium of iced claret-cup and sparkling moselle. And there were present, too, as Guilfoyle phrased it, "some of those d--d fellows who write and paint, by Jove!"

On this day Guilfoyle, though he had carefully attired himself in correct morning costume, seemed rather preoccupied and irritable. The presence of Pottersleigh and so many others placed his society somewhat at a discount; and, glass in eye, he seemed to watch the arrival of the lady guests, especially any who were darkly attired, with a nervous anxiety, which, somehow, I mentally connected with the pale woman in church, and Dora's story of the initials. There was undoubtedly some mystery about him. Viewed from the perron of the house, the scene was certainly a gay one--the greenness of the closely-mown lawn, dotted by the bright costumes of the ladies, and a few scarlet coats (among them Caradoc's and mine); the brilliance and the perfume of flowers were there; the buzz of happy voices, the soft laughter of well-bred women, and the strains of the band, as they ebbed and flowed on the gentle breeze of the sunny noon. Every way it was most enjoyable. Here on one side spread an English chase, with oaks as old, perhaps, as the days when "Beddgelert heard the bugle sound," leafy, crisp, and massive, their shadows casting a tint that was almost blue on the soft greensward, with the sea rippling and sparkling about a mile distant, where a portion of the chase ended at the edge of some lofty cliffs. On the other side rose the Welsh mountains, with all their gray rocks, huge boulders, and foaming waterfalls--mountains from where there seemed in fancy to come the scent of wild flowers, of gorse, and blackberries, to dispel the fashionable languor of the promenaders on the lawn. The leaves, the flowers, the trees of the chase, the ladies' dresses, and the quaint fa?ade of the old Tudor mansion were all warm with sunshine.

Old Morgan Roots the gardener, to his great disgust, had been compelled to rifle the treasures of his hothouses, and to strip his shelves of the most wonderful exotics, to furnish bouquets for the ladies; for Morgan was proud of his floral effects, and when displaying his slippings from Kew and all the best gardens in England, tulips from Holland and the Cape, peonies from Persia, rhododendrons from Asia, azaleas from America, wax-like magnolias, and so forth, he was wont to exult over his rival, the vicar's Scotch gardener, whom he stigmatised as "a sassenach;" and not the least of his efforts were some superb roses, named the "Dora," in honour of the fair-haired heroine of the day. And Caradoc--who was a good judge of everything, from cutlets and clicquot to horses and harness, and had a special eye for ankles, insteps, and eyelashes, style, and colour, &c.--declared the fête to be quite a success. As I looked around me, I could not but feel how England is pre-eminently, beyond all others, the land of fair women and of beauty. Lady Estelle, with her pale complexion and thick dark hair, her dress of light-blue silk, over which she wore a white transparent tunique, her tiny bonnet of white lace, her gloves and parasol of the palest silver-gray, seemed a very perfect specimen of her class; but until Lord Pottersleigh appeared, which was long after dancing had begun on the sward (by country visitors chiefly), she sat by the side of mamma, and declined all offers from partners. The Viscount--my principal bête noire--had arrived over-night in his own carriage from Chester, but did not appear at breakfast next morning, nor until fully midday, as he had to pass--so Dora whispered to me--several hours in an arm-chair, with his gouty feet enveloped in flannel, while he regaled himself by sipping colchicum and warm wine-whey, though he alleged that his lameness was caused by a kick from his horse; and now, when with hobbling steps he came to where Lady Naseby and her stately daughter were seated, he did not seem--his coronet and Order of the Garter excepted--a rival to be much dreaded by a smart Welsh Fusileer of five and twenty.

Fully in his sixtieth year, and considerably wasted--more, perhaps, by early dissipation than by time--the Viscount was a pale, thin, and feeble-looking man, hollow-chested and slightly bent, with an unsteadiness of gait, an occasional querulousness of manner and restlessness of eye, as if nervous of the approach of many of those among whom he now found himself, and whom he viewed as "bumpkins in a state of rude health." Guilfoyle, of whom he evidently had misgivings, he regarded with a cold and aristocratic stare, after carefully adjusting a gold eyeglass on his thin, aquiline nose, and yet they had been twice introduced elsewhere. His features were good. In youth he had been deemed a handsome man; but now his brilliant teeth were of Paris, and what remaine............