er their cooler lights. She saw the gray
shoulders of the downs, the cattle-specked fields, the shadowy
plantations with rutted lanes where the barked timber lay for a wayside
seat, the neatly-clipped hedges on the road from the parsonage to
Offendene, the avenue where she was gradually discerned from the
window, the hall-door opening, and her mother or one of the troublesome
sisters coming out to meet her. All that brief experience of a quiet
home which had once seemed a dullness to be fled from, now came back to
her as a restful escape, a station where she found the breath of
morning and the unreproaching voice of birds after following a lure
through a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with an
intoxicated belief in its disguises, and had seen the end of in
shrieking fear lest she herself had become one of the evil spirits who
were dropping their human mummery and hissing around her with serpent
tongues.

In this way Gwendolen's mind paused over Offendene and made it the
scene of many thoughts; but she gave no further outward sign of
interest in this conversation, any more than in Sir Hugo's opinion on
the telegraphic cable or her uncle's views of the Church Rate Abolition
Bill. What subjects will not our talk embrace in leisurely
day-journeying from Genoa to London? Even strangers, after glancing
from China to Peru and opening their mental stores with a liberality
threatening a mutual impression of poverty on any future meeting, are
liable to become excessively confidential. But the baronet and the
rector were under a still stronger pressure toward cheerful
communication: they were like acquaintances compelled to a long drive
in a mourning-coach who having first remarked that the occasion is a
melancholy one, naturally proceed to enliven it by the most
miscellaneous discourse. "I don't mind telling _you_," said Sir Hugo to
the rector, in mentioning some private details; while the rector,
without saying so, did not mind telling the baronet about his sons, and
the difficulty of placing them in the world. By the dint of discussing
all persons and things within driving-reach of Diplow, Sir Hugo got
himself wrought to a pitch of interest in that former home, and of
conviction that it was his pleasant duty to regain and strengthen his
personal influence in the neighborhood, that made him declare his
intention of taking his family to the place for a month or two before
the autumn was over; and Mr. Gascoigne