“At your age,” Lady Ashleigh declared, “that is the sort of correspondence which you should find interesting.”

Ella shook her head.  She was a very beautiful young woman, but her expression was a little more serious than her twenty-two years warranted.

“You know I am not like that, mother,” she protested.  “I have found one thing in life which interests me more than all this frivolous business of amusing oneself.  I shall never be happy—­not really happy—­until I have settled down to study hard.  My music is really the only part of life which absolutely appeals to me.”

Lady Ashleigh sighed.

“It seems so unnecessary,” she murmured.  “Since Esther was married you are practically an only daughter, you are quite well off, and there are so many young men who want to marry you.”

Ella laughed gaily.

“That sort of thing may come later on, mother,” she declared,—­“I suppose I am only human like the rest of us—­but to me the greatest thing in the whole world just now is music, my music.  It is a little wonderful, isn’t it, to have a gift, a real gift, and to know it?  Oh, why doesn’t Delarey make up his mind and let father know, as he promised!...  Here comes daddy, mum.  Bother!  He’s going to shoot, and I hoped he’d play golf with me.”

Lord Ashleigh, who had stepped through some French windows at the farther end of the terrace, paused for a few minutes to look around him.  There was certainly some excuse for his momentary absorption.  The morning, although it was late September, was perfectly fine and warm.  The cattle in the park which surrounded the house were already gathered under the trees.  In the far distance, the stubble fields stretched like patches of gold to ridges of pine-topped hills, and beyond to the distant sea.  The breakfast table at which his wife and daughter were seated was arranged on the broad grey stone terrace, and, as he slowly approached, it seemed like an oasis of flowers and fruit and silver.  A footman stood discreetly in the background.  Half a dozen dogs of various breeds came trotting forward to meet him.  His wife, still beautiful notwithstanding her forty-five years, had turned her pleasant face towards him, and Ella, whom a great many Society papers had singled out as being one of the most beautiful debutantes of the season, was welcoming him with her usual lazy but wholly good-humoured smile.

“Daddy, your habits are getting positively disgraceful!” she exclaimed.  “Mother and I have nearly finished—­and our share of the post-bag is most uninteresting.  Please come and sit down, tell us where you are going to shoot, and whether you’ve had any letters this morning?”

Lord Ashleigh loitered for a moment to raise the covers from the dishes upon a side table.  Afterwards he seated himself in the chair which the servant was holding for him.

“I am going out for an hour or two with Fitzgerald,” he announced.  “Partridges are scarcely worth shooting yet but he has arranged a few drives over the hills.  As for my being late—­well, that has something to do with you, young lady.”