privileges of ancestral
wealth. Standing here alone, Godwin would have surveyed these
possessions of an English aristocrat with more or less bitterness; envy
would, for a moment at all events, have perturbed his pleasure in the
natural scene. Accompanied as he was, his emotion took a form which
indeed was allied to envy, but had nothing painful. He exulted in the
prerogatives of birth and opulence, felt proud of hereditary pride,
gloried that his mind was capable of appreciating to the full those
distinctions which, by the vulgar, are not so much as suspected.
Admitted to equal converse with men and women who represented the best
in English society, he could cast away the evil grudge, the fierce
spirit of self-assertion, and be what nature had proposed in endowing
him with large brain, generous blood, delicate tissues. What room for
malignancy? He was accepted by his peers, and could regard with
tolerance even those ignoble orders of mankind amid whom he had so long
dwelt unrecognised.

A bee hummed past him, and this sound--of all the voices of nature that
which most intenerates--filled his heart to overflowing. Moisture made
his eyes dim, and at the impulse of a feeling of gratitude, such as
only the subtlest care of psychology could fully have explained, he
turned to Buckland, saying:

'But for my meeting with you I should have had a lonely and not very
cheerful holiday. I owe you a great deal.'

Warricombe laughed, but as an Englishman does when he wishes to avoid
show of emotion.

'I am very glad indeed that we did meet. Stay with us over tomorrow. I
only wish I were not obliged to go to London on Wednesday.--Look,
Fanny, isn't that a hawk, over Cowley Bridge?'

'Do you feel you would like to shoot it?' asked Miss Moorhouse--who a
moment ago had very closely examined Peak's face.

'To shoot it--why do you ask that?'

'Confess that you felt the desire.'

'Every man does,' replied Buckland, 'until he has had a moment to
recover himself. That's the human instinct.'

'The male human instinct. Thank you for your honesty.'

They drove on, and by a wide circuit, occasionally stopping for the
view, returned to the Old Tiverton Road, and so home. By this time
Louis Warricombe and Mr. Moorhouse were back from their walk. Reposing
in the company of the ladies, they had partaken of such refreshments as
are lawful at five o'clock, and now welcomed with vivacity the later
arrivals. Moorhouse was something older tha