nts when he almost yearned to hear her say that she could never love
him. But in his love and religious suffering the thought of bringing a
soul home to the true fold remained a fixed light; he often looked to it
with happy eyes, and then if he were alone he fell on his knees and
prayed. Prayer like an opiate calmed his querulous spirit, and having
told his beads--the great beads which hung on his prie-dieu--he would go
down stairs with peace in his heart, and finding Kitty, he would ask her
to walk with him in the garden, or they would stroll out on the tennis
lawn, racquet in hand.

One afternoon it was decided that they should go for a long walk. John
suggested that they should climb to the top of Toddington Mount, and
view the immense plain which stretches away in dim blue vapour and a
thousand fields.

You see John and Kitty as they cross the wide park towards the vista in
the circling elms,--she swinging her parasol, he carrying stiffly his
grave canonical cane. He still wears the long black coat buttoned at the
throat, but the air of hieratic dignity is now replaced by, or rather it
is glossed with, the ordinary passion of life. Both are like children,
infinitely amused by the colour of the grass and sky, by the hurry of
the startled rabbit, by the prospect of the long walk; and they taste
already the wild charm of the downs, seeing and hearing in imagination
its many sights and sounds, the wild heather, the yellow savage gorse,
the solitary winding flock, the tinkling of the bell-wether, the
cliff-like sides, the crowns of trees, the mighty distance spread out
like a sea below them with its faint and constantly dissolving horizon
of the Epsom Hills.

"I never can cross this plain, Kitty, without thinking of the Dover
cliffs as seen in mid Channel; this is a mere inland imitation of them."

"I have never seen the Dover cliffs; I have never been out of England,
but the Brighton cliffs give me an idea of what you mean."

"On your side--the Shoreham side--the downs rise in a gently sloping
ascent from the sea."

"Yes, we often walk up there. You can see Brighton and Southwick and
Worthing. Oh! it is beautiful! I often go for a walk there with my
friends, the Austen girls--you saw them here at the Meet."

"Yes, Mr Austen has a very nice property; it extends right into the town
of Shoreham, does it not?"

"Yes, and right up to Toddington Mount, where we are going. But aren't
you a little tired, John? These ro