remind you,
Mr. Wendover, that there are other matters than eviction capable of
provoking an outcry.'

'As you please,' said the other indifferently. 'I have no doubt I shall
find myself in the newspapers before long. If so, I dare say I shall
manage to put up with it. Society, is fanatics and the creatures they
hunt. If I am to be hunted, I shall be in good company.'

Robert stood, hat in hand, tormented with a dozen cross-currents
of feeling. He was forcibly struck with the blind and comparatively
motiveless pugnacity of the Squire's conduct. There was an extravagance
in it which for the first time recalled to him old Meyrick's
lucubrations.

'I have done no good, I see, Mr. Wendover,' he said at last, slowly. 'I
wish I could have induced you to do an act of justice and mercy. I wish
I could have made you think more kindly of myself. I have failed in
both. It is useless to keep you any longer. Good morning.'

He bowed. The Squire also bent forward. At that moment Robert caught
sight beside his shoulder of an antique, standing on the mantel piece,
which was a new addition to the room. It was a head of Medusa, and
the frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmere's ruffled nerves with
extraordinary force. It flashed across him that here was an apt symbol
of that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights
the heart and chills the senses. And to that spiritual Medusa, the man
before him was not the first victim he had known.

Possessed with the fancy, the young man made his way into the hall.
Arrived there, he looked round with a kind of passionate regret: 'Shall
I ever see this again?' he asked himself. During the past twelve months
his pleasure in the great house had been much more than sensuous. Within
those walls his mind had grown, had reached to a fuller stature than
before, and a man loves, or should love, all that is associated with the
maturing of his best self.

He closed the ponderous doors behind him sadly. The magnificent pile,
grander than ever in the sunny autumnal mist which unwrapped it, seemed
to look after him as he walked away, mutely wondering that he should
have allowed anything so trivial as a peasant's grievance to come
between him and its perfections.

In the wooded lane outside the Rectory gate he overtook Catherine. He
gave her his report, and they walked on together arm-in-arm, a very
depressed pair.

'What shall you do next?' she asked him.

'Make out the law of t