rate, hastily interrupting
him. "Good-night--don't forget what I said about the other matter." Mr
Wentworth went out of the shop with a disagreeable impression that
Elsworthy had been examining his face like an inquisitor, and was
already forming conclusions from what he had seen there. He went away
hurriedly, with a great many vague fears in his mind. Mr Wodehouse's
sudden illness seemed to him a kind of repetition and echo of the
Squire's, and in the troubled and uncertain state of his thoughts, he
got to confusing them together in the centre of this whirl of unknown
disaster and perplexity. Perhaps even thus it was not all bitterness to
the young man to feel his family united with that of Lucy Wodehouse. He
went down Grange Lane in the summer darkness under the faint stars, full
of anxiety and alarm, yet not without a thrill in his heart, a sweeter
under-current of conscious agitation in the knowledge that he was
hastening to her presence. Sudden breaks in his thoughts revealed her,
as if behind a curtain, rising to receive him, giving him her hand,
meeting his look with a smile; so that, on the whole, neither Gerald's
distress, nor Jack's alarming call, nor his father's attack, nor Mr
Wodehouse's illness, nor the general atmosphere of vexation and trouble
surrounding his way, could succeed in making the young man totally
wretched. He had this little stronghold of his own to retire into. The
world could not fall to pieces so long as he continued with eager steps
to devour the road which led to Mr Wodehouse's garden-door.

Before he had reached that goal, however, he met a group who were
evidently returning from some little dinner in Grange Lane. Mr Wentworth
took off his hat hastily in recognition of Mrs Morgan, who was walking
by her husband's side, with a bright-coloured hood over her head
instead of a bonnet. The Curate, who was a man of taste, could not help
observing, even in the darkness, and amid all his preoccupations, how
utterly the cherry-coloured trimmings of her head-dress were out of
accordance with the serious countenance of the Rector's wife, who was a
little heated with her walk. She was a good woman, but she was not fair
to look upon; and it occurred to Mr Wentworth to wonder, if Lucy were to
wait ten years for him, would the youthful grace dry and wither out of
her like this! And then all at once another idea flashed upon his mind,
without any wish of his. Like the unhappy lover in the ballad, he wa