affectionately on
the old man's knee.

'I have added to my knowledge,' said the Squire dryly, 'Like Heine, I
am qualified to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on
earth. And I am not in bed, which I was last week. For Heaven's sake
don't ask questions. If there is a loathsome subject on earth it is the
subject of the human body. Well, I suppose my message to you dragged
you away from a thousand things you had rather be doing. What are you so
hoarse for? Neglecting yourself as usual, for the sake of "the people,"
who wouldn't even subscribe to bury you? Have you been working up the
Apocrypha as I recommended you last time we met?'

Robert smiled.

The great head fell forward, and through the dusk Robert caught the
sarcastic gleam of the eyes.

'For the last four months, Squire, I have been doing two things with
neither of which you had much sympathy in old days--holiday-making and
"slumming."'

'Oh' I remember,' interrupted the Squire hastily. 'I was low last week,
and read the Church papers by way of a counter-irritant. You have been
starting a new religion, I see. A new religion! _Humph!_'

'You are hardly the man to deny,' he said, undisturbed, 'that the old
ones _laissent a desirer_.'

'Because there are old abuses, is that any reason why you should go
and set up a brand-new one--an ugly anachronism besides?' retorted the
Squire. 'However, you and I have no common ground--never had. I say
_know_, you say _feel_. Where is the difference, after all, between you
and any charlatan of the lot? Well, how is Madame de Netteville?'

'I have not seen her for six months,' Robert replied, with equal
abruptness.

The Squire laughed a little under his breath.

'What did you think of her?'

'Very much what you told me to think--intellectually,' replied Robert,
facing him, but flushing with the readiness of physical delicacy.

'Well, I certainly never told you to think anything--_morally_,' said
the Squire. 'The word moral has no relation to her. Whom did you see
there?'

The catechism was naturally most distasteful to its object, but Elsmere
went through with it, the Squire watching him for a while with an
expression which had a spark of malice in it. It is not unlikely that
some gossip of the Lady Aubrey sort had reached him. Elsmere had always
seemed to him oppressively good. The idea that Madame de Netteville had
tried her arts upon him was not without its piquancy.

But while Robert was ans