S THE PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY TO RESOLVE

It was not without a movement of inward thanksgiving that, the
festivities connected with Sir Richard and Lady Calmady's home-coming
being over, Julius March returned to his labours in the Brockhurst
library. Humanity at first hand, whatever its social standing or its
pursuits, was, in truth, always slightly agitating to him. He felt more
at home when dealing with conclusions than with the data that go to
build up those conclusions, with the thoughts of men printed and bound,
than with the urgent raw material from which those thoughts arise.
Revelation, authority--these were still his watchwords; and in face of
them even the harmless spectacle of a country neighbourhood at play,
let alone the spectacle of the human comedy generally, is singularly
confusing.

He sought the soothing companionship of books with even heightened
relief one fair morning some three weeks later. For Mrs. St. Quentin
and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had arrived at Brockhurst the day
previously, and Julius had been sensible of certain perturbations of
mind in meeting these two ladies, one of whom was a devout Catholic by
inheritance and personal conviction; while the other, though nominally
a member of his own communion, was known to temper her religion with a
wide, if refined, philosophy. Conversation had drifted towards serious
subjects in the course of the evening, and Mrs. St. Quentin had
admitted, with a playful deprecation of her dear friend's rigid
religious attitude, that no one creed, no one system, offered an
adequate solution of the infinite mystery and complexity of life--as
she knew it. The serene adherence of one charming and experienced woman
to an authority which he had rejected, the almost equally serene
indifference on the part of the other to the revelation he held as
absolute and final, troubled Julius. Small wonder then, that early,
after a solitary breakfast, he retired upon the society of the odd
volumes cluttering the shelves of the Long Gallery, that he sorted,
arranged, catalogued, grateful for that dulling of thought which
mechanical labour brings with it.

But fate was malicious, and elected to make a sport of Julius this
morning. Unexpectedly importunate human drama obtruded itself, the deep
places of the story--such as, in the innocence of his ascetic
refinement, he had never dreamed of--began to reveal themselves.

He had climbed the wide, carpeted steps of the library l