ly, 'to have led you into
over-walking and over-talking like this.'

The squire made some short reply and instantly turned the matter off.
The momentary softness which had marked his meeting with Elsmere had
entirely vanished, leaving only the Mr. Wendover of every day, who was
merely made awkward and unapproachable by the slightest touch of
personal sympathy. No living being, certainly not his foolish little
sister, had any _right_ to take care of the squire. And as the signs of
age became more apparent, this one fact had often worked powerfully on
the sympathies of Elsmere's chivalrous youth, though as yet he had been
no more capable than any one else of breaking through the squire's
haughty reserve.

As they turned down the newly-worn track to the cottages, whereof the
weekly progress had been for some time the delight of Elsmere's heart,
they met old Meyrick in his pony-carriage. He stopped his shambling
steed at sight of the pair. The bleared spectacled eyes lit up, the prim
mouth broke into a smile which matched the April sun.

'Well, Squire; well, Mr. Elsmere, are you going to have a look at those
places? Never saw such palaces. I only hope I may end my days in
anything so good. Will you give me a lease, Squire?'

Mr. Wendover's deep eyes took a momentary survey, half indulgent, half
contemptuous, of the naive, awkward-looking old creature in the
pony-carriage. Then, without troubling to find an answer, he went his
way.

Robert stayed chatting a moment or two, knowing perfectly well what
Meyrick's gay garrulity meant. A sharp and bitter sense of the ironies
of life swept across him. The squire humanised, influenced by him--he
knew that was the image in Meyrick's mind; he remembered with a quiet
scorn its presence in his own. And never, never had he felt his own
weakness and the strength of that grim personality so much as at that
instant.

That evening Catherine noticed an unusual silence and depression in
Robert. She did her best to cheer it away, to get at the cause of it. In
vain. At last, with her usual wise tenderness, she left him alone,
conscious herself, as she closed the study door behind her, of a
momentary dreariness of soul, coming she knew not whence, and only
dispersed by the instinctive upward leap of prayer.

Robert was no sooner alone than he put down his pipe and sat brooding
over the fire. All the long debate of the afternoon began to fight
itself out again in the shrinking mind. Sudde