all. No woman short of divine could have gone through such an
experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a little
soured. Her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had
covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm.
She left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings. To make life as easy
as possible to this touching object became at once his care.

As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see feasibility in
a scheme which pleased him. Revolving the experiment which he had
hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his
mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.

What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover. Once more he had
opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by returning
to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's roof at
Hintock. Helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement to a
home; Sally was the woman to brighten it. She would not, as Helena did,
despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside. Moreover, she had
a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other woman could
make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one
as Sally--while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising
husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
uncured sentimental wound.

Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
reparative designs might have been delayed for some time. But there came
a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that
former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone
longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.

He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a
younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode
off. To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain
have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him. But Johns, alas!
was missing. His removal to the other side of the county had left
unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and Darton; and though
Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as Johns had probably forgiven
Darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one not likely
to be made.

He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
former crony, and became content with hi