walked on into the open country, and what with the
discipline of the rector's presence, the sobering effect wrought by the
shock to pride and habit, and the unwonted brain exercise of the
conversation, the demon in Henslowe had been for the moment most
strangely tamed after half an hour's talk. Actually some reminiscences
of his old ways of speech and thought, the ways of the once prosperous
and self-reliant man of business, had reappeared in him before the end
of it, called out by the subtle influence of a manner which always
attracted to the surface whatever decent element there might be left in
a man, and then instantly gave it a recognition which was more redeeming
than either counsel or denunciation.

By the time they parted Robert had arranged with his old enemy that he
should become his surety with a rich cousin in Churton, who, always
supposing there were no risk in the matter, and that benevolence ran on
all-fours with security of investment, was prepared to shield the credit
of the family by the advance of a sufficient sum of money to rescue the
ex-agent from his most pressing difficulties. He had also wrung from him
the promise to see a specialist in London--Robert writing that evening
to make the appointment.

How had it been done? Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever quite knew.
Henslowe walked home in a bewilderment which for once had nothing to do
with brandy, but was simply the result of a moral shock acting on what
was still human in the man's debased consciousness, just as electricity
acts on the bodily frame.

Robert, on the other hand, saw him depart with a singular lightening of
mood. What he seemed to have achieved might turn out to be the merest
moonshine. At any rate, the incident had appeased in him a kind of
spiritual hunger--the hunger to escape a while from that incessant
process of destructive analysis with which the mind was still beset,
into some use of energy, more positive, human, and beneficent.

The following day was one long trial of endurance for Elsmere and for
Catherine. She pleaded to go, promising quietly to keep out of his
sight, and they started together--a miserable pair.

Crowds, heat, decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuous
among them the squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by side
with a white and radiant Lady Helen--the outer success, the inner revolt
and pain--and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that
hid itself as much