into a banqueting-hall and ballroom for the first Lord Surrey of the present creation. It was lovely weather when Harry Vardon went down there; and the Abbey, and the terrace, and the park, and the beautiful valley beyond were looking their very best. Harry fell in love with the view at once, and almost fell in love with the inmates too at the first glance.

Lady Surrey, the mother, was sitting on a garden seat in front of the house as the carriage which met him at Colyford station drove up to the door. She was much younger and more beautiful than Harry had at all expected. He had pictured the dowager to himself as a stately old lady of sixty, with white hair and a grand manner; instead of which he found himself face to face with a well-preserved beauty of something less than forty, not above medium height, and still strikingly pretty in a round-faced, mature, but very delicate fashion. She had wavy chestnut hair, regular features, an exquisite set of pearly teeth, full cheeks whose natural roses were perhaps just a trifle increased by not wholly ungraceful art, and above all a lovely complexion quite unspoilt as yet by years. She was dressed as such a person should be dressed, with no affectation of girlishness, but in the style that best shows off ripe beauty and a womanly figure. Harry was always a very impressionable fellow; and I really believe that if Lady Surrey had been alone he would have fallen over head and ears in love with her at first sight.

But there was something which kept him from falling in love at once with Lady Surrey, and that was the girl who sat half reclining on a tiger-skin at her feet, with a little sketching tablet on her lap. He could hardly take full stock of the mother because he was so busy looking at the daughter as well. I shall not attempt to describe Lady Gladys Durant; all pretty girls fall under one of some half-dozen heads, and description at best can really

do no more than classify them. Lady Gladys belonged to the tall and graceful aristocratic class, and she was a good specimen of the type at seventeen. Not that Harry Vardon fell in love with her at once; he was really in the pleasing condition of Captain Macheath, too much engaged in looking at two pretty women to be capable even mentally of making a choice between them. Mother and daughter were both almost equally beautiful, each in her own distinct style.

The countess half rose to greet him-it is condescension on the part of a countess to notice the tutor at all, I belive; but though I am no lover of lords myself, I will do the Durants the justice to say that their treatment of Harry was always the very kindliest that could possibly be expected from people of their ideas and traditions.

"Mr. Vardon?" she said interrogatively, as she held out her hand to the new tutor. Harry bowed assent. "I'm glad you have such a lovely day to make your first acquaintance with Colyford. It's a pretty place, isn't it? Gladys, this is Mr. Vardon, who is kindly going to take charge of Surrey for us."

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I'm afraid you don't know what you're going to undertake," said Gladys, smiling and holding out her hand. "He's a dreadful pickle. Do you know this part of the world before, Mr. Vardon?"

"Not just hereabouts," Harry answered; "my father's parish was in North Devon, but I know the greater part of the county very well."

"That's a good thing," said Gladys quickly; "we're all Devonshire people here, and we believe in the county with all our hearts. I wish Surrey took his title from it. It's so absurd to take your title from a place you don't care about only because you've got land there. I love Devonshire people best of any."

"Mr. Vardon would probably like to see his rooms," said the countess. "Parker, will you show him up?"

The rooms were everything that Harry could wish. There was a prettily furnished sitting-room for himself on the front, looking across the terrace, with a view of the valley and the sea in the distance; there was a study next door, for tutor and pupil to work in; there was a cheerful little bedroom behind; and downstairs at the back there was the large bare room for which Harry had specially stipulated, wherein to put his electrical apparatus, for he meant to experiment and work busily at his own subject in his spare time. There was a special servant, too, told off to wait upon him; and altogether Harry felt that if only the social position could be made endurable, he could live very comfortably for a year or two at Colyford Abbey.

There are some men who could never stand such a life at all. There are others who can stand it because they can stand anything. But Harry Vardon belonged to neither class. He was one of those who feel at home in most places, and who can get on in all society alike. In the first place, he was one of the handsomest fellows you ever saw, with large dark eyes, and that particular black moustache that no woman can ever resist. Then again he was tall and had a good presence, which impressed even those most dangerous of critics for a private tutor, the footmen. Moreover, he was clever, chatty, and agreeable; and it never entered into his head that he was not conferring some distinction upon the Surrey family by consenting to be teacher to their young lordling-which, indeed, was after all the sober fact.

The train was in a little before seven, and there was a bit of a drive from the station, so that Harry had only just had time to dress for dinner when the gong sounded. In the drawing-room he met his future pupil, a goodlooking, high-spirited, but evidently lazy boy of sixteen. The family was alone, so the earl took down his mother, while Harry gave his arm to Lady Gladys. Before dinner

was over, the new tutor had taken the measure of the trio pretty accurately. The countess was clever, that was certain; she took an interest in books and in art, and she could talk lightly but well upon most current topics in the easy sparkling style of a woman of the world. Gladys was clever too, though not booky; she was full of sketching and music, and was delighted to hear that Harry could paint a little in water-colours, besides being the owner of a good violin. As to the boy, his fancy clearly ran for the most part to dogs, guns, and cricket; and indeed, though he was no doubt a very important person as a future member of the British legislature, I think for the purposes of the present story, which is mainly concerned with Harry Vardon's fortunes, we may safely leave him out of consideration. Harry taught him as much as he could be induced to learn for an hour or two every morning, and looked after him as far as possible when he was anywhere within hearing throughout the rest of the day; but as the lad was almost always out around the place somewhere with a gamekeeper or a stable-boy, he hardly entered practically into the current of Harry's life at all, outside the regular hours of study. As a matter of fact, he never learnt much from anybody or did anything worth speaking of; but he has since married a Birmingham heiress with a million or so of her own, and is now one of the most rising young members of the House of Lords.

After dinner, the countess showed Harry her excellent collection of Bartolozzis, and Harry, who knew something about them, showed the countess that she was wrong as to the authenticity of one or two among them. Then Gladys played passably well, and he sang a duet with her, in a way that made her feel a little ashamed of her own singing. And lastly Harry brought down his violin, at which the countess smiled a little, for she thought it audacious on the first evening; but when he played one

of his best pieces she smiled again, for she had a good ear and a great deal of taste. After which they all retired to bed, and Gladys remarked to her maid, in the privacy of her own room, that the new tutor was a very pleasant man, and quite a relief after such a stick as Mr.

Wilkinson.

At breakfast next morning the party remained unchanged, but at lunch the two younger girls appeared upon the scene, with their governess, Miss Martindale. Though very different in type from Gladys, Ethel Martindale was in her way an equally pretty girl. She was small and mignonne, with delicate little hands, and a light pretty figure, not too slight, but very gracefully proportioned. Her cheeks and chin were charmingly dimpled, and her complexion was just of that faintly-dark tinge that one sees so often combined with light-brown hair and eyes in the moorland parts of Lancashire. Altogether, she was a perfect foil to Gladys, and it would have been difficult for almost any man as he sat at that table to say which of the three, mother, daughter, or governess, was really the prettiest. For my own part, I give my vote unreservedly for the countess, but then I am getting somewhat grizzled now and have long been bald; so my liking turns naturally towards ripe beauty. I hate your self-conscious chits of seventeen, who can only chat and giggle; I like a woman who has something to say for herself. But Harry was just turned twenty-three, and perhaps his choice might, not unnaturally, have gone otherwise.

The governess talked little at lunch, and seemed altogether a rather subdued and timid girl. Harry noticed with pain that she appeared half afraid of speaking to anybody, and also that the footmen made a marked distinction between their manner to him and their manner to her. He would have liked once or twice to kick the fellows for their insolence. After lunch, Gladys and the