khurst without you, Julius," Richard
said, a sudden softening in his tone.

"I will bring you the documents the last thing to-night, when--when
your mother has left you. They are best read, perhaps, in silence and
alone."

CHAPTER VI

A LITANY OF THE SACRED HEART

Richard drew himself up on to the wide, cushioned bench below the
oriel-window. The February day was windless and very bright. And
although, in sheltered, low-lying places, where the frost held, the
snow still lingered, in the open it had already disappeared, and that
without unsightliness of slush--shrinking and vanishing, cleanly burned
up and absorbed by the genial heat. A Sabbath-day restfulness held the
whole land. There was no movement of labour, either of man or beast.
And a kindred restfulness pervaded the house. The rooms were vacant.
None passed to and fro. For it so happened that good Mr. Caryll's
successor, the now rector of Sandyfield, had been called away to
deliver certain charity sermons at Westchurch, and that to-day Julius
March officiated in his stead. Therefore Lady Calmady and Miss St.
Quentin, and the major part of the Brockhurst household, had repaired
by carriage or on foot to the little, squat, red-brick, Georgian church
whose two bells rang out so friendly and fussy an admonition to the
faithful to gather within its walls.

Richard had the house to himself. And this accentuation of solitude,
combined with wider space wherein he could range without fear of
observation, was far from unwelcome to him. Last night he had untied
the tag of rusty, black ribbon binding together the packet of tattered,
dog's-eared, little chap-books which for so long had reposed in the
locked drawer of Julius March's study table beneath the guardianship of
the bronze _pieta_. With very conflicting feelings he had mastered the
contents of those same untidy, little volumes, and learned the sordid,
and probably fabulous, tale set forth in them in meanest vehicle of
jingling verse. Vulgarly told to catch the vulgar ear, pandering to the
popular superstitions of a somewhat ignoble age, it proved repugnant
enough--as Julius had anticipated--both to Richard's reason and to his
taste. The critical faculty rejected it as an explanation absurdly
inadequate. The cause was wholly disproportionate to the effect, as
though a mouse should spring forth a mountain instead of a mountain a
mouse. At least that was how the matter struck Richard at first. For
the st