the task which he had in hand made him sick at his own
heart. He walked slowly across the fields, turning over in his own
mind the words he would use. His misery for his friend was infinitely
greater than any that he had suffered on his own account, either in
regard to Mr. Puddleham's chapel or the calumny of the Marquis.

He found Gilmore sauntering about the stable yard. "Old fellow," he
said, "come along, I have got something to say to you."

"It is about Mary, I suppose?"

"Well, yes; it is about Mary. You mustn't be a woman, Harry, or let a
woman make you seriously wretched."

"I know it all. That will do. You need not say anything more." Then
he put his hands into the pockets of his shooting coat, and walked
off as though all had been said that was necessary. Fenwick had told
his message and might now go away. As for himself, in the sharpness
of his agony he had as yet made no scheme for a future purpose. Only
this he had determined. He would see that false woman once again, and
tell her what he thought of her conduct.

But Fenwick knew that his task was not yet done. Gilmore might walk
off, but he was bound to follow the unhappy man.

"Harry," he said, "you had better let me come with you for awhile.
You had better hear what I have to say."

"I want to hear nothing more. What good can it be? Like a fool, I
had set my fortune on one cast of the die, and I have lost it. Why
she should have added on the misery and disgrace of the last few
weeks to the rest, I cannot imagine. I suppose it has been her way of
punishing me for my persistency."

"It has not been that, Harry."

"God knows what it has been. I do not understand it." He had turned
from the stables towards the house, and had now come to a part of
the grounds in which workmen were converting a little paddock in
front of the house into a garden. The gardener was there with four or
five labourers, and planks, and barrows, and mattocks, and heaps of
undistributed earth and gravel were spread about. "Give over with
this," he said to the gardener, angrily. The man touched his hat, and
stood amazed. "Leave it, I say, and send these men away. Pay them for
the work, and let them go."

"You don't mean as we are to leave it all like this, sir?"

"I do mean that you are to leave it just as it is." There was a man
standing with a shovel in his hand levelling some loose earth, and
the Squire, going up to him, took the shovel from him and threw it
upon the g