Wendover waiting grimly
in the winter dusk outside one of his own farmhouses while Elsmere was
inside, or patrolling a bit of lane till Elsmere should have inquired
after an invalid or beaten up a recruit for his confirmation class,
dogged the while by stealthy children, with fingers in their mouths, who
ran away in terror directly he turned.

Rumors of this new friendship spread. One day, on the bit of road
between the Hall and the Rectory, Lady Helen behind her ponies whirled
past the two men, and her arch look at Elsmere said as plain as words,
'Oh, you young wonder! what hook has served you with this leviathan?

On another occasion, close to Churton, a man in a cassock and cloak came
toward them. The Squire put up his eye-glass.

'Humph!' he remarked; 'do you know this merryandrew, Elsmere?'

It was Newcome. As they passed, Robert with slightly, heightened color
gave him an affectionate nod and smile. Newcome's quick eye ran over the
companions, he responded stiffly, and his step grew more rapid. A week
or two later Robert noticed with a little prick of remorse that he had
seen nothing of Newcome for an age. If Newcome would not come to him, he
must go to Mottringham. He planned an expedition, but something happened
to prevent it.

And Catherine? Naturally this new and most unexpected relation of
Robert's to the man who had begun by insulting him was of considerable
importance to the wife. In the first place it broke up to some extent
the exquisite _tete-a-tete_ of their home life; it encroached often upon
time that had always been hers; it filled Robert's mind more and more
with matters in which she had no concern. All these things many wives
might have resented. Catherine Elsmere resented none of them. It is
probable, of course, that she had her natural moments of regret and
comparison when love said to itself a little sorely and hungrily, 'It
is hard to be even a fraction less to him then I once was?' But if
so, these moments never betrayed themselves in word or act. Her tender
common sense, her sweet humility, made her recognize at once Robert's
need of intellectual comradeship, isolated as he was in this remote
rural district. She knew perfectly that a clergyman's life of perpetual
giving forth becomes morbid and unhealthy if there is not some
corresponding taking in.

If only it had not been Mr. Wendover! She marvelled over the fascination
Robert found in his dry cynical talk. She wondered that a Christ