But poor John had hardly ever tasted the least of those things too familiar to the golden youth of the period to be even noticed.

He had felt when he first entered the little drawing-room of the cottage that Mrs.Goddard herself belonged, or had belonged, to that delicious unknown world of ease where the question of expense was never considered, much less mentioned.

In her own eyes she was indeed living in a state approaching to penury, but the spectacle of her pictures, her furniture and her bibelots had impressed John with a very different idea.

The squire's invitation, asking him to spend a week at the Hall, seemed in a moment to put him upon the same level as the woman to whom he believed himself so devotedly attached.

To his mind the ideal woman could not but be surrounded by a luxurious atmosphere of her own.