that out of
the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, Brook and Mr. Harry
Musgrave must have been much in Miss Fairfax's thoughts; this was now
the third time that she had found occasion to mention them since coming
to breakfast.

Lady Latimer turned in-doors again with a preoccupied air. Bessie had
looked behind her as she rode down the avenue, as if she were bidding
them good-bye. Mr. Cecil Burleigh was silent too. He had come to
Fairfield with certain lively hopes and expectations, for which my lady
was mainly responsible, and already he was experiencing sensations of
blankness worse to bear than disappointment. Others might be perplexed
as to Miss Fairfax's sentiments, but to him they were clear as the
day--friendly, but nothing more. She was now where she would be, was
exuberantly contented, and could not hide how slight a tie upon her had
been established by a year amongst her kindred in Woldshire.

"This is like old times, Bessie," said the doctor as the Fairfield gate
closed behind them.

Bessie laughed and tossed her head like a creature escaped. "Yes, I am
so happy!" she answered.

The ride was just one of the doctor's regular rounds. He had to call at
Brook, where a servant was ill, and they went by the high-road to the
manor. Harry Musgrave was not at home. He had gone out for a day's
ranging, and was pensively pondering his way through the bosky recesses
of the Forest, under the unbroken silence of the tall pines, to the
seashore and the old haunts of the almost extinct race of smugglers. The
first person they met after leaving the manor was little Christie with a
pale radiant face, having just come on a perfect theme for a picture--a
still woodland pool reflecting high broken banks and flags and rushes,
with slender birchen trees hanging over, and a cluster of low
reed-thatched huts, very uncomfortable to live in, but gloriously mossed
and weather-stained to paint.

"Don't linger here too late--it is an unwholesome spot," said Mr.
Carnegie, warning him as he rode on. Little Christie set up his white
umbrella in the sun, and kings might have envied him.

"My mother is better, but call and see her," he cried after the doctor;
this amendment was one cause of the artist's blitheness.

"Of course, she is better--she has had nothing for a week to make her
bad," said Mr. Carnegie; but when he reached the wheelwright's and saw
Mrs. Christie, with a handkerchief tied over her cap, gently pacing the
na