HALF A MILLION OF MONEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

    CHAPTER XXV.    OLIMPIA COLONNA.

SAXON found the Earl waiting for him at the
Sedgebrook station, with a plain phaeton, and
a long-limbed, bony, black mare, that looked
somewhat viciously askance at the new comer,
and would evidently not have consented to
stand still for a moment, were it not for the
groom at her head.

"That's right, Trefalden," said Castletowers,
as Saxon emerged from the station with his
guncase in his hand, and his rug over his shoulder.
"Your train's a quarter after time, and the mare
has been giving herself as many airs as a spoiled
beauty. Jump up, my dear fellow, and let me
tell you how glad I am to see you. Brought
any horses?"

"Yes, two—since you insisted that I should
do so. Here they come."

The Earl turned and glanced at the thoroughbreds,
which were now being led down in a
travelling costume that left nothing of them
visible save their hoofs and their eyes.

"They're as welcome as yourself—if that's
not a bad compliment," said he. "I've sent a
light cart for your luggage, and my man shall
follow with your groom, to show him the way.
It's only a couple of miles to the park gates.
Anything else?"

There was nothing else; so the groom stepped
back, and the mare shook her ears, and went
away down the road as if she had been shot
from a catapult.

"I am delighted you've brought those horses,
Trefalden," said the Earl, as they flew along
between the green hedgerows of the pleasant
country road, "for I have really nothing to
mount you upon. I have given over the only
beast in the stables fit to ride, for Miss
Colonna's sole use and benefit, as long as she
remains at Castletowers."

"Miss Colonna!" echoed Saxon.

"A lady who is visiting us," replied the
Earl, explanatorily. "You have heard of her
father no doubt—Giulio Colonna, the great
Italian patriot. He is staying with us also."

"Yes, I have heard of him," said Saxon, who
had turned very red, and begun to wish himself
back again in London.

"He is my mother's oldest friend," continued
Castletowers, "and mine too. I don't know
what you may have heard of him—few public
characters have ever had so many enemies, or
so many friends—but you must be prepared to
like him, Trefalden, for my sake. You may not
take to him at first. He is eccentric, absent, and
somewhat cold; but a man of antique virtue—
a man whose grand simplicity is as much out of
place in the nineteenth century as Cincinnatus
himself would be out of place in a modern
drawing-room."

Saxon thought of the twenty francs that
Signor Colonna had offered him at Reichenau,
and did not kindle at this description, as his
friend had anticipated.

"I have heard nothing to his disadvantage,"
he said, with some constraint. "Is Major
Vaughan still with you?"

"Yes, and Burgoyne comes down to-morrow
for a week's shooting. We intend to be quite
gay while you are all here."

"What do you mean by 'quite gay' ?"

"Well, my mother gives a dinner-party to-
morrow, and an evening-party on Saturday;
and on Thursday the last meet of the season
will be held on our grounds. Then, on Monday,
the officers of the Forty-second, now quartered
at Guildford, give a great ball, to which our
guests are, of course, invited—and so runs the
programme, with little variation. It is
monotonous; but what can one do at a distance of
thirty miles from London?"

"Lead the happiest life in the world, I should
think," replied Saxon.

"It is a question of taste and means," said
the Earl, with a sigh. "A motif of field-sports,
set to an everlasting ritornella of dining and
dancing. Dancing and dining—that is life in an
English country-house. For myself; I prefer
the harsher music of a military band."

"Do you mean that you wish to go into the
army?"

"I mean, that I should like to be a soldier,
if my sword and my sympathies could go
together; but that they never can, so it's of no
use to think about it. Do you see that belt of
pines straight ahead, and the green slope beyond,
sprinkled over with elms? That's Castletowers.
The house will come into sight directly, at the
turn of the road."

And then the conversation strayed to other
topics, and Saxon told his friend how William