office upon himself, chose to esteem himself cast off,
and went heavily about the farmyard, knowing that he ought to go in
and bid such poor welcome as he had to offer, yet feeling too much
to like to show himself before Philip.

It was long, too, before any one had leisure to come and seek him.
Bell's mind had flashed up for a time, till the fatal day, only to
be reduced by her subsequent illness into complete and hopeless
childishness. It was all Philip and Sylvia could do to manage her in
the first excitement of returning home; her restless inquiry for him
who would never more be present in the familiar scene, her feverish
weariness and uneasiness, all required tender soothing and most
patient endurance of her refusals to be satisfied with what they
said or did.

At length she took some food, and, refreshed by it, and warmed by
the fire, she sank asleep in her chair. Then Philip would fain have
spoken with Sylvia before the hour came at which he must return to
Monkshaven, but she eluded him, and went in search of Kester, whose
presence she had missed.

She had guessed some of the causes which kept him from greeting them
on their first return. But it was not as if she had shaped these
causes into the definite form of words. It is astonishing to look
back and find how differently constituted were the minds of most
people fifty or sixty years ago; they felt, they understood, without
going through reasoning or analytic processes, and if this was the
case among the more educated people, of course it was still more so
in the class to which Sylvia belonged. She knew by some sort of
intuition that if Philip accompanied them home (as, indeed, under
the circumstances, was so natural as to be almost unavoidable), the
old servant and friend of the family would absent himself; and so
she slipped away at the first possible moment to go in search of
him. There he was in the farm-yard, leaning over the gate that
opened into the home-field, apparently watching the poultry that
scratched and pecked at the new-springing grass with the utmost
relish. A little farther off were the ewes with their new-dropped
lambs, beyond that the great old thorn-tree with its round fresh
clusters of buds, again beyond that there was a glimpse of the vast
sunny rippling sea; but Sylvia knew well that Kester was looking at
none of these things. She went up to him and touched his arm. He
started from his reverie, and turned round upon her with his dim