midday walks, which I
have discontinued too much of late. I took the dry airy road over the
moor that leads to Todd's Corner. After having been out half an hour,
I was excessively surprised to see Sir Percival approaching me from the
direction of the farm. He was walking rapidly, swinging his stick, his
head erect as usual, and his shooting jacket flying open in the wind.
When we met he did not wait for me to ask any questions--he told me at
once that he had been to the farm to inquire if Mr. or Mrs. Todd had
received any tidings, since his last visit to Limmeridge, of Anne
Catherick.

"You found, of course, that they had heard nothing?" I said.

"Nothing whatever," he replied. "I begin to be seriously afraid that
we have lost her. Do you happen to know," he continued, looking me in
the face very attentively "if the artist--Mr. Hartright--is in a
position to give us any further information?"

"He has neither heard of her, nor seen her, since he left Cumberland,"
I answered.

"Very sad," said Sir Percival, speaking like a man who was
disappointed, and yet, oddly enough, looking at the same time like a
man who was relieved. "It is impossible to say what misfortunes may
not have happened to the miserable creature. I am inexpressibly
annoyed at the failure of all my efforts to restore her to the care and
protection which she so urgently needs."

This time he really looked annoyed. I said a few sympathising words,
and we then talked of other subjects on our way back to the house.
Surely my chance meeting with him on the moor has disclosed another
favourable trait in his character? Surely it was singularly considerate
and unselfish of him to think of Anne Catherick on the eve of his
marriage, and to go all the way to Todd's Corner to make inquiries
about her, when he might have passed the time so much more agreeably in
Laura's society? Considering that he can only have acted from motives
of pure charity, his conduct, under the circumstances, shows unusual
good feeling and deserves extraordinary praise. Well! I give him
extraordinary praise--and there's an end of it.

19th.--More discoveries in the inexhaustible mine of Sir Percival's
virtues.

To-day I approached the subject of my proposed sojourn under his wife's
roof when he brings her back to England. I had hardly dropped my first
hint in this direction before he caught me warmly by the hand, and said
I had made the very offer to him which he had be