MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES.

Everybody in Trelasco and in the neighbourhood seemed glad to see Colonel Disney again. All the best people within a six-mile drive came bearing down upon the Angler's Nest in the week that followed his return; and there were cosy little afternoon tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, or on the lawn, and Isola had her hands full in receiving visitors. Everybody congratulated her upon having her hero back from the wars.

"You ought to be very proud of your husband, Mrs. Disney," said Vansittart Crowther, with his air of taking all the world under his protection.

"I have always been proud of him," Isola answered gently. "I was proud of him before the Burmese War."

"Your poor wife has been looking very unhappy for the last few months," Mrs. Crowther said to the colonel, with a motherly glance at Isola. "I really had a good mind to write to you and beg you to hurry home if you didn't want to find the poor thing far gone in a decline when you came back."

"My dear Mrs. Crowther, what nonsense," cried Isola, growing crimson at this motherly officiousness. "I have never been out of health, or in the least likely to go into a decline. One cannot always look like a dairy-maid."

"My dear, there's no use talking, you looked very bad. Had one of my girls looked as ill, I should have taken her off to Buxton to drink the waters, without an hour's delay."

That visit of the Crowthers seemed much longer than any other afternoon call. The Crowthers, husband, and wife, and elder daughter, had an inquisitorial air, Isola fancied, an air of scrutinizing her house and herself and her surroundings, which was intolerable to her; although on Mrs. Crowther's part she knew the scrutiny was made in the[Pg 100] utmost benevolence, and the officiousness was the outcome of a nature overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

"I wish you had written to me, Mrs. Crowther," said Disney. "I couldn't have come home any sooner, but I could have telegraphed to my sister Allegra to look after my wife, and cheer her solitude. I was a fool not to have had her here all along."

"Hadn't I better go out of the room while you are holding your consultation about me?" exclaimed Isola, fretfully. "It's rather hard upon the patient to hear her case discussed in cold blood. I am tired of declaring that I have not been ill, and that it is my misfortune and not my fault to have a pale complexion."

"You were not always so pallid, my dear," said Mrs. Crowther, persistently. "You were one of the beauties of the Hunt Ball, and you had colour enough that night."

Dr. and Mrs. Baynham came the following afternoon, and these two told the same story, though with less obtrusive concern.

"I looked after the young lady now and then," said the worthy doctor, "and as I found there was nothing radically wrong, I didn't worry you with any low-spirited reports; but I expect to see her pick up wonderfully now you have come home. She didn't take enough outdoor exercise, that's where the harm was. She used to be so fond of her boat last year, but this year I fancy she didn't feel herself up to handling the sculls. You didn't now, did you, Mrs. Disney?"

"I don't know about that, but I am ready to row to the Land's End, now Martin is back," said Isola, and those few words seemed the sweetest Martin Disney had heard since Colonel Manwaring's daughter promised to be his wife.

Mrs. Baynham sat on the lawn, sipping her tea, and basking in the afternoon sunshine.

"You should have seen your wife in her wedding-gown at the Lostwithiel dance," she said. "You would have been proud of her. She didn't want to go—refused Mrs. Crowther[Pg 101] and me again and again. She thought it wasn't right to be at any merry-making while your life was in danger."

"Yes, I know—I know. My tender-hearted Isola!"

"But at last we got the better of her objections; and though there were a good many pretty women there, and though Miss Crowther, perhaps, pleased most tastes, being a more showy style of beauty, to my thinking there wasn't one came up to Mrs. Disney."

"Her partners seemed of the same opinion," put in the doctor, cheerily. "Why, how often did Lord Lostwithiel dance with you, Mrs. Disney? Oftener than with anybody else, I'll be bound."

Mrs. Baynham nodded approvingly.

"I was very proud of my party that evening, I can tell you, Colonel Disney," she said. "It isn't often that one has to chaperon three attractive young women. Do you know that my youngest niece, Maria, has had two offers since that night, Isola, and when I last heard from her she was on the brink of an engagement? Ah, well, I hope we shall have another ball next December, now that the neighbourhood has begun to wake up a bit. We have been thinking of getting up a water picnic this summer—just a little excursion to Mevagissey, and a little fishing for those who might care for it."

"Very pleasant, indeed, of you," answered the colonel, cheerily. "We will be there."

"The Crowthers are rather grand in their ideas," said the doctor, "but Alicia is very keen upon all kind of sport, so I know she'll want to come, whatever Belinda may say to it."

Mrs. Baynham made a wry face at the name of the elder sister. It was an involuntary and unconscious contortion; but Belinda had tried to snub Mrs. Baynham, who never could forget that her father was a banker at Truro, and held the fortunes—the mortgages and encumbrances of the landed gentry—in the hollow of his hand.

"You don't like the elder Miss Crowther?" speculated the colonel.

"Well, if I am to be candid, I must confess that I have a[Pg 102] positive aversion to that young lady. The airs she gives herself on the strength of her father's wool are really insupportable, and since Lord Lostwithiel disappointed her she has been more odious than she was before."

"What do you mean by Lostwithiel disappointing her? Did he jilt her?"

"Well, it could scarcely be called jilting, and I really don't know that there was anything between them; but people had coupled their names—and he dined at Glenaveril at least once a week all the time he was at the Mount—and people had quite made up their minds it was to be a match. Mr. Crowther went about talking of Lord Lostwithiel and his affairs as if he was his father-in-law—the neglected condition of the land, and what ought to be done at the Mount, and that the estate wanted judicious nursing, and all that sort of thing. And then one December morning his lordship sailed off in his yacht before it was light, and there was no more heard of him. It was quite in his way to go off suddenly like that, but the Crowthers were evidently taken by surprise, and we heard no more about Lord Lostwithiel and the Mount."

"They dropped him like a hot potato," said the doctor. "Well, we shall depend upon you both for our water-party. It will not be till the middle of July, when an old chum of mine, a sailor, will be coming this way."

This was a sample of many such visits. In the country, and even in London upon occasion, people are given to discussing the same subjects. Martin Disney heard a good deal about the Crowthers and their supposed disappointment. People liked Mrs. Crowther for her simple, unaffected ways, and thorough-going kindliness; but Vansittart and his daughters had made a good many enemies. He was too coarse; they were too fine; only the mother's simple nature had caught the golden mean between blunt vulgarity and artificial smartness.

Colonel Disney heard all this village gossip with an unheeding ear. He was secure in his own position as a son of[Pg 103] the soil, a man whose pedigree could pass muster with that of the Rashleighs and the Treffrys, a man of means that were ample for his own unpretending tastes and requirements. He cared not a jot how many guineas a year the Crowthers might give to their cook, or how much Mr. Crowther had paid for the furnishing and decoration of his house, a theme upon which the gossips of the neighbourhood loved to enlarge. That Mrs. Crowther had gowns from Worth, and that her daughters employed Mrs. Mason, irked not this simple soldier. The only point in all the stream of talk that had affected him was the unanimous opinion that Trelasco in the spring had been too relaxing for Mrs. Disney, or else that her solitude had preyed upon her mind, inasmuch as she had looked so ill as to afford an interesting subject of conversation to a good many friendly people who suffered from the chronic malady of not having enough to talk about, a form of starvation almost as bad as not having enough to eat.

Tho colonel listened, and made his own conclusions. He did not believe that Trelasco was "relaxing." Ho loved the district too well to believe any evil thing about it. Those fresh breezes that blew up from the sea, those balmy airs that breathed across the heather-clad hills, must bring health with them. What could one have better than that mingling of sea and hill, brine and honey, gorse-bloom and seaweed? No, Trelasco was not to blame. His young wife had suffered for lack of youthful company. He made up his mind accordingly.

"I suppose you won't object to our having Allegra here for a summer visit, will you, love?" he asked at breakfast the day after Mrs. Baynham's call. "London must be hot, and dusty, and dreary in July, and she must want rest and country air, I fancy, after having worked so hard in her art school."

Isola gave a scarcely perceptible sigh as she bent to caress Tim, a privileged attendant of the breakfast-table.

"Object! Of course not, Martin. I shall be very pleased for your sister to come here."

[Pg 104]

"I feel very sure you will be pleased with her when you and she get upon intimate terms. You could know so little of her from that one evening in the Cavendish Road."

The occasion in question was an evening in which Isola and her husband had been bidden to a friendly dinner, on their way through London, by the clergyman's widow with whom Allegra lived while she pursued her study of art at a famous school in St. John's Wood. The clergyman's widow, Mrs. Meynell, was a distant cousin of the Disneys, and Allegra's home had been with her from the time she left school. The extent of her wanderings after she was old enough to be sent to a boarding-school had been from Falmouth to Kensington, and from Kensington to St. John's Wood, with occasional holidays in the Isle of Thanet.

"I thought she was very fresh and bright and loving," answered Isola, "and I could see even in that one evening that she was very fond of you."

"Yes, God bless her, there is no doubt about that. I have been brother and father too for her. She has had no one but me since our mother's death."

"Shall I write and ask her to come to us, Martin, or will you?"

"I fancy she would take it more as a compliment if the invitation went straight from you. She would know that I would be glad to have her, but she might feel a little doubtful about you."

"Then I'll write to her to-day, Martin, and beg her to come at once—as soon as ever she can pack her boxes."

"That's my darling! I hope she won't bore you when she is here. I have a shrewd idea she'll make your life happier. She'll awaken you from that languor which has grown upon you in your loneliness."

"At least I'll try to make her happy, Martin, if it is only for your sake."

"Ah, and you will soon love her for her own sake."

"I'll get the boat looked to at once, and I'll see about making the spare room pretty for her," said Isola.

[Pg 105]

A week later Allegra was with them, breakfasting on the lawn in the balmy atmosphere of July. There were two girls, in white gowns, under the tulip tree, instead of one; and Martin Disney felt as if his domestic happiness were doubled, as he looked at those two graceful figures in the flickering light below that canopy of broad bright leaves. Another element of comfort, too, had entered the Angler's Nest; for the incompetent cook had taken her incompetency and a month's wages to her native city of Truro; and a buxom damsel from Falmouth, recommended by Tabitha, had already proved herself a treasure in the culinary art.

Never was there a fairer picture than that domestic group under the tulip tree. Tho two girlish figures in white muslin, with palest salmon and palest azure ribbons fluttering and glancing in the light and deepening in the shadow; the white fox-terrier, alert, muscular, mercurial; the tortoise-shell cat, long-haired, aristocratic, and demure; the pretty Moorish plateau on bamboo legs, the purple and crimson breakfast service and rare old silver urn, the fruit and flowers, and amber-hued butter, and rustic luxury of preserved fruit and clotted cream.

"How lovely it all is after Cavendish Road!" cried Allegra, rapturously. "When I see the lights and shadows upon those hills, I despair of ever being able to paint a landscape as long as I live. Nature is maddeningly beautiful."

"What is your particular line, Allegra?" asked her brother. "Is it landscape?"

"No; I only care for landscape as a background for humanity. I want to paint genre pictures in water-colour—women and children—beautiful women amidst beautiful surroundings—picturesque poverty—interesting bits of daily life. Mrs. Allingham is the ideal after which I strive, but I am only at the bottom of the ladder. It is a long climb to the top; but one does not mind that in a profession where labour is delight."

"You are fond of art, then?" said Isola, watching the earnest face of the speaker.

[Pg 106]

"Fond of it! Why, I live for it! The dream of my life from the time I was seven years old has been one long dream of the bliss that was to be mine when I could feel myself able to paint. I have toiled with all my might. Martin disliked the idea of my being an Academy student—poor, foolish, ignorant Martin—so I have been obliged to plod on at St. John's Wood, without hope of prizes or medals; but on the whole I have been very lucky, for I have made friends among the Academicians. They are very kind to any student who seems in rightdown earnest; and they have been ever so good to me. I hope, Martin, you will find some day that I am something better than an amateur," she concluded, resting her two hands caressingly upon her brother's shoulder.

"My dearest, I have not the least doubt you will astonish me. I am very ignorant of everything connected with art. I set my face against the Academy because I thought the training and the life would be too public for my sister."

"As if Burlington House were any more public than that big school at St. John's Wood, my dear illogical brother: and yet we women are the only people who are said to be wanting in the logical faculty."

She leant back in her basket-chair, revelling in the rural atmosphere, and in that new sense of being in the bosom of her family. Tim leapt upon her lap and licked her face, in token of his acceptance of her into th............