and meadow; Dr.
Shrapnel, deep in the science, on one side of her, and Beauchamp,
requiring instruction in the names and properties of every plant and
simple, on the other. It was a day of summer sweetness, gentle laughter,
conversation, and the happiest homeliness. The politicians uttered barely
a syllable of politics. The dinner basket was emptied heartily to make
way for herb and flower, and at night the expedition homeward was crowned
with stars along a road refreshed by mid-day thunder-showers and smelling
of the rain in the dust, past meadows keenly scenting, gardens giving out
their innermost balm and odour. Late at night they drank tea in Jenny's
own garden. They separated a little after two in the morning, when the
faded Western light still lay warm on a bow of sky, and on the level of
the East it quickened. Jenny felt sure she should long for that yesterday
when she was among foreign scenes, even among high Alps-those mysterious
eminences which seemed in her imagination to know of heaven and have the
dawn of a new life for her beyond their peaks.

Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to Beauchamp:
'Will you take care of him?' She flung her arms round Dr. Shrapnel's
neck, and gazed at him under troubled eyelids which seemed to be passing
in review every vision of possible harm that might come to him during her
absence; and so she continued gazing, and at no one but Dr. Shrapnel
until the bend of the line cut him from her sight. Beauchamp was a very
secondary person on that occasion, and he was unused to being so in the
society of women--unused to find himself entirely eclipsed by their
interest in another. He speculated on it, wondering at her concentrated
fervency; for he had not supposed her to possess much warmth.

After she was fairly off on her journey, Dr. Shrapnel mentioned to
Beauchamp a case of a Steynham poacher, whom he had thought it his duty
to supply with means of defence. It was a common poaching case.

Beauchamp was not surprised that Mr. Romfrey and Dr. Shrapnel should come
to a collision; the marvel was that it had never occurred before, and
Beauchamp said at once: 'Oh, my uncle Mr. Romfrey would rather see them
stand their ground than not.' He was disposed to think well of his uncle.
The Jersey bull called him away to Holdesbury.

Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had
to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevish