into the room behind her, a
curious film, so it seemed to him, darkening her small gray eyes.

'The squire is not here. He is gone away. Have you seen my white mice?
Oh, they are such darlings! Only, one of them is ill, and they won't let
me have the doctor.'

Her voice sank into the most pitiful plaintiveness. She stood in the
middle of the room, pointing with an elfish finger to a large cage of
white mice which stood in the window. The room seemed full besides of
other creatures. Robert stood rooted, looking at the tiny withered
figure in the black dress, its snowy hair and diminutive face swathed in
lace, with a perplexity into which there slipped an involuntary shiver.
Suddenly he became aware of a woman by the fire, a decent,
strong-looking body in gray, who rose as his look turned to her. Their
eyes met; her expression and the little jerk of her head towards Mrs.
Darcy, who was now standing by the cage coaxing the mice with the
weirdest gestures, were enough. Robert turned, and went out sick at
heart. The careful exquisite beauty of the great hall struck him as
something mocking and anti-human.

No one else in the house said a word to him of Mrs. Darcy. In the
evening the squire talked much at intervals, but in another key. He
insisted on a certain amount of light, and, leaning on Robert's arm,
went feebly round the bookshelves. He took out one of the volumes of the
Fathers that Newman had given him.

'When I think of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish,' he
said, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of the
other hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! Thank
Heaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. And
when once I got to it, I learnt my lesson pretty quick.'

Robert paused, his kind inquiring eyes looking down on the shrunken
squire.

'Oh, not one _you_ have any chance of learning, my good friend,' said
the other aggressively. 'And after all it's simple. _Go to your grave
with your eyes open_--that's all. But men don't learn it, somehow.
Newman was incapable--so are you. All the religions are nothing but so
many vulgar anaesthetics, which only the few have courage to refuse.'

'Do you want me to contradict you?' said Robert, smiling; 'I am quite
ready.'

The squire took no notice. Presently, when he was in his chair again, he
said abruptly, pointing to a mahogany bureau in the window, 'The book is
all there--both parts, first and s