your own past by thinking of their future?'

'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his forehead
hopelessly.

It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply--the secret
object of his visit to-night. 'Did you not say one day that you ought by
rights to get a governess for the children?'

Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way to
it. 'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said, 'would be rather
beyond my means. No; I think I shall send them to school in the town
when they are old enough to go out alone.'

'Now, I know of something better than that. The late Lieutenant Savile's
daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of teaching.
She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as well as
anybody for six or twelve months. She would probably come daily if you
were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not be much
affected.'

'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing. 'Where does
she live?'

Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be
on the wing. 'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be advisable not to
mention my name. She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it might
prejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended it.'

Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more
was said about it just then. But when Barnet rose to go, which was not
till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up the
street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his
promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.

CHAPTER VII

The walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full height.
By a curious though not infrequent reaction, Barnet's feelings about that
unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he took considerable
interest in its progress as a long-neglected thing, his wife before her
departure having grown quite weary of it as a hobby. Moreover, it was an
excellent distraction for a man in the unhappy position of having to live
in a provincial town with nothing to do. He was probably the first of
his line who had ever passed a day without toil, and perhaps something
like an inherited instinct disqualifies such men for a life of pleasant
inaction, such as lies in the power of those whose leisure is not a
p