rt caught
sight beside his shoulder of an antique, standing on the mantelpiece,
which was a new addition to the room. It was a head of Medusa, and the
frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmere's ruffled nerves with
extraordinary force. It flashed across him that here was an apt symbol
of that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights the
heart and chills the senses. And to that spiritual Medusa, the man
before him was not the first victim he had known.

Possessed with the fancy the young man made his way into the hall.
Arrived there, he looked round with a kind of passionate regret: 'Shall
I ever see this again?' he asked himself. During the past twelve months
his pleasure in the great house had been much more than sensuous. Within
those walls his mind had grown, had reached to a fuller stature than
before, and a man loves, or should love, all that is associated with the
maturing of his best self.

He closed the ponderous doors behind him sadly. The magnificent pile,
grander than ever in the sunny autumnal mist which enwrapped it, seemed
to look after him as he walked away, mutely wondering that he should
have allowed anything so trivial as a peasant's grievance to come
between him and its perfections.

* * * * *

In the wooded lane outside the rectory gate he overtook Catherine. He
gave her his report, and they walked on together arm-in-arm, a very
depressed pair.

'What shall you do next?' she asked him.

'Make out the law of the matter,' he said briefly.

'If you get over the inspector,' said Catherine anxiously, 'I am
tolerably certain Henslowe will turn out the people.'

He would not dare, Robert thought. At any rate, the law existed for such
cases, and it was his bounden duty to call the inspector's attention.

Catherine did not see what good could be done thereby, and feared harm.
But her wifely chivalry felt that he must get through his first serious
practical trouble his own way. She saw that he felt himself
distressingly young and inexperienced, and would not for the world have
harassed him by over advice.

So she let him alone, and presently Robert threw the matter from him
with a sigh.

'Let it be a while,' he said, with a shake of his long frame. 'I shall
get morbid over it if I don't mind. I am a selfish wretch too. I know
you have worries of your own, wifie.'

And he took her hand under the trees and kissed it with a boyish
tenderness.