The third week of Mr. and Mrs. Halliday's visit was near its close, and as yet the young farmer had arrived at no decision as to the subject which had brought him to London. The sale of Hyley Farm was an accomplished fact, and the purchase-money duly bestowed at Tom's banker's; but very little had been done towards finding the new property which was to be a substitute for the estate his father and grandfather had farmed before him. He had seen auctioneers, and had brought home plans of estates in Herefordshire and Devonshire, Cornwall and Somersetshire, all of which seemed to be, in their way, the most perfect things imaginable—land of such fertility as one would scarcely expect to find out of Arcadia—live stock which seemed beyond all price, to be taken at a valuation.—roads and surrounding neighbourhood unparalleled in beauty and convenience—outbuildings that must have been the very archetypes of barns and stables—a house which to inhabit would be to adore. But as yet he had seen none of these peerless domains. He was waiting for decent weather in which to run down to the West and "look about him," as he said to himself. In the meantime the blustrous March weather, which was so unsuited to long railroad journeys, and all that waiting about at junctions and at little windy stations on branch lines, incidental to the inspection of estates scattered over a large area of country, served very well for "jolly-dog-ism;" and what with a hand at cards in George Sheldon's chambers, and another hand at cards in somebody else's chambers, and a run down to an early meeting at Newmarket, and an evening at some rooms where there was something to be seen which was as near prize-fighting as the law allowed, and other evenings in unknown regions, Mr. Halliday found time slipping by him, and his domestic peace vanishing away.

It was on an evening at the end of this third week that Mr. Sheldon abandoned his mechanical dentistry for once in a way, and ascended to the drawing-room where poor Georgy sat busy with that eternal needlework, but for which melancholy madness would surely overtake many desolate matrons in houses whose common place comfort and respectable dulness are more dismal than the picturesque dreariness of a moated grange amid the Lincolnshire fens. To the masculine mind this needlework seems nothing more than a purposeless stabbing and sewing of strips of calico; but to lonely womanhood it is the prison-flower of the captive, it is the spider of Latude.

Mr. Sheldon brought his guest an evening newspaper.

"There's an account of the opening of Parliament," he said, "which you may perhaps like to see. I wish I had a piano, or some female acquaintances to drop in upon you. I am afraid you must be dull in these long evenings when Tom is out of the way."