“I conclude all is well at Lady Verner’s,” remarked Sir Henry.

“Well enough,” returned Jan.  “I thought I heard you were not coming until to-morrow.  They’ll be surprised.”

“I wrote word I should be with them to-morrow,” replied Sir Henry.  “But I got impatient to see my child.  Since I left India and have been fairly on my way to her, the time of separation has seemed longer to me than it did in all the previous years.”

“She’s a nice girl,” returned Jan.  “The nicest girl in Deerham.”

“Is she pretty?” asked Sir Henry.

The question a little puzzled Jan.  “Well, I think so,” answered he.  “Girls are much alike for that, as far as I see.  I like Miss Lucy’s look, though; and that’s the chief thing in faces.”

“How is your brother, Janus?”

Jan burst out laughing.  “Don’t call me Janus, Sir Henry.  I am not known by that name.  They wanted me to have Janus on my door-plate; but nobody would have thought it meant me, and the practice might have gone off.”

“You are Jan, as you used to be, then?  I remember Lucy has called you so in her letters to me.”

“I shall never be anything but Jan.  What does it matter?  One name’s as good as another.  You were asking after Lionel.  He has got Verner’s Pride again:  all in safety now.”

“What a very extraordinary course of events seems to have taken place, with regard to Verner’s Pride!” remarked Sir Henry.  “Now your brother’s, now not his, then his again, then not his!  I cannot make it out.”

“It was extraordinary,” assented Jan.  “But the uncertain tenure is at an end, and Lionel is installed there for life.  There ought never to have been any question of his right to it.”

“He has had the misfortune to lose his wife,” observed Sir Henry.

“It was not much of a misfortune,” returned Jan, always plain.  “She was too sickly ever to enjoy life; and I know she must have worried Lionel nearly out of his patience.”

Jan had said at the station that Deerham Court was “close by.”  His active legs may have found it so; but Sir Henry began to think it rather far than close.  As they reached the gates Sir Henry spoke.

“I suppose there is an inn near, where I can send my servant to lodge.  There may not be accommodation for him at Lady Verner’s?”

“There’s accommodation enough for that,” said Jan.  “They have plenty of room, and old Catherine can make him up a bed.”

Lady Verner and Lucy were out.  They had not returned from the call on Mrs. Bitterworth—­for it was the afternoon spoken of in the last chapter.  Jan showed Sir Henry in; told him to ring for any refreshment he wanted; and then left.

“I can’t stay,” he remarked.  “My day’s rounds are not over yet.”

But scarcely had Jan reached the outside of the gate when he met the carriage.  He put up his hand, and the coachman stopped.  Jan advanced to the window, a broad smile upon his face.