, after all, we give ourselves most acceptably to
God in thus giving ourselves to His human creatures."

Thus did Marie de Mirancourt, for love's sake, condemn herself to
exile, thereby rendering possible--among other things--Julius's
continued residence at Brockhurst. For Captain Ormiston had held true
to his resolve of scorning the delights of idleness, the smiles of
ladies more kind than wise, and all those other pleasant iniquities to
which idleness inclines the young and full-blooded, of bidding farewell
to London and Windsor, and proceeding to "live laborious days" in some
far country. He had offered to remain indefinitely with Katherine if
she needed him. But she refused. Let him be faithful to the noble
profession of arms and make a name for himself therein.

"Brockhurst has ceased to be a place for a soldier," she said. "Leave
it to women and priests!" And then, repenting of the bitterness of her
speech, she added:--"Really there is not more work than I can manage,
with Julius to help me at times. Iles is a good servant if a little
tediously pompous, and Chifney must see to the stables."--Lady Calmady
paused, and her face grew hard. But for her husband's dying request,
she would have sold every horse in the stud, razed the great square of
buildings to the ground and made the site of it a dunghill. "Work is a
drug to deaden thought. So it is a kindness to let me have plenty of
it, dear old man. And I fear, even when the labour of each day is done,
and Dickie is safe asleep,--poor darling,--I shall still have more than
enough of time for thought, for asking those questions to which there
seems no answer, and for desires, vain as they are persistent, that
things were somehow, anyhow, other than they are!"

Therefore it came about that a singular quiet settled down on
Brockhurst--a quiet of waiting, of pause, rather than of
accomplishment. But Julius March, for reasons aforesaid, and
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, in virtue of her unclouded faith in the
teachings of her Church,--which assures its members of the beneficent
purpose working behind all the sad seeming of this world,--alike
rejoiced in that. A change of occupations and of interests came
naturally with the change of the seasons, with the time to sow and
reap, to plant saplings, to fell timber, to fence, to cut copsing, to
build or rebuild, to receive rents or remit them, to listen to many
appeals, to readjust differences, to feed game or to shoot it, to