n enclosure that had just taken place
in the neighbourhood. Robert listened a moment, then struck in.
Presently, when the chat dropped, he began to express to the squire his
pleasure in the use of the library. His manner was excellent, courtesy
itself, but without any trace of effusion.

'I believe,' he said at last, smiling, 'my father used to be allowed the
same privileges. If so, it quite accounts for the way in which he clung
to Murewell.'

'I had never the honour of Mr. Edward Elsmere's acquaintance,' said the
squire frigidly. 'During the time of his occupation of the rectory I was
not in England.'

'I know. Do you still go much to Germany? Do you keep up your relations
with Berlin?'

'I have not seen Berlin for fifteen years,' said the squire briefly, his
eyes in their wrinkled sockets fixed sharply on the man who ventured to
question him about himself, uninvited. There was an awkward pause. Then
the squire turned again to Mr. Bickerton.

'Bickerton, have you noticed how many trees that storm of last February
has brought down at the north-east corner of the park?'

Robert was inexpressibly galled by the movement, by the words
themselves. The squire had not yet addressed a single remark of any kind
about Murewell to _him_. There was a deliberate intention to exclude
implied in this appeal to the man who was not the man of the place, on
such a local point, which struck Robert very forcibly.

He walked away to where his wife was sitting.

'What time is it?' whispered Catherine, looking up at him.

'Time to go,' he returned, smiling, but she caught the discomposure in
his tone and look at once, and her wifely heart rose against the squire.
She got up, drawing herself together with a gesture that became her.

'Then let us go at once,' she said. 'Where is Rose?'

A minute later there was a general leave-taking. Oddly enough it found
the squire in the midst of a conversation with Langham. As though to
show more clearly that it was the rector personally who was in his black
books, Mr. Wendover had already devoted some cold attention to Catherine
both at and after dinner, and he had no sooner routed Robert than he
moved in his slouching away across from Mr. Bickerton to Langham. And
now, another man altogether, he was talking and laughing--describing
apparently a reception at the French Academy--the epigrams flying, the
harsh face all lit up, the thin bony fingers gesticulating freely.

The husband and wife e