Elinor which made
him a bachelor all his days, I am by no means certain that this was
true. Perhaps he never would have made up his mind had she remained
always within his reach. Certain it is that he was relieved when he
found that to give up the idea of marriage was the best thing for him.
He adopted the conclusion with pleasure. His next brother had already
married, though he was younger than John; but then he was a clergyman,
which is a profession naturally tending to that sort of thing. There
was, however, no kind of necessity laid upon him to provide for the
continuance of the race. And he was a happy man.

By what sequence of ideas it was that he considered himself justified,
having come to this conclusion, in immediately paying his long-promised
visit to Lakeside, is a question which I need not enter into, and indeed
do not feel entirely able to cope with. It suited him, perhaps, as
he had been so long a time in Switzerland last year: and he had an
invitation to the far north for the grouse, which he thought it would be
pleasant to accept. Going to Scotland or coming from it, Waterdale of
course lies full in the way. He took it last on his way home, which was
more convenient, and arrived there in the latter part of September,
when the hills were golden with the yellow bracken. The Cumberland hills
are a little cold, in my opinion, without the heather, which clothes
with such a flush of life and brightness our hills in the north. The
greenness is chilly in the frequent rain; one feels how sodden and
slippery it is--a moisture which does not belong to the heather: but
when the brackens have all turned, and the slopes reflect themselves in
the tranquil water like hills of gold, then the landscape reaches its
perfect point. Lakeside was a white house standing out on a small
projection at the head of the lake, commanding the group of hills above
and part of the winding body of water below, in which all these golden
reflections lay. A little steamer passed across the reflected glory, and
came to a stop not a hundred yards from the gate of the house. It was a
scene as unlike as could be conceived to the Cottage at Windyhill: the
trees were all glorious in colour; yellow birches like trees made of
light, oaks all red and fiery, chestnuts and elms and beeches in a
hundred hues. The house was white, with a sort of broad verandah round,
supported on pillars, furnishing a sheltered walk below and a broad
balcony above, whi