eliness. The politicians uttered
barely a syllable of politics. The dinner basket was emptied heartily to
make way for herb and flower, and at night the expedition homeward was
crowned with stars along a road refreshed by mid-day thunder-showers and
smelling of the rain in the dust, past meadows keenly scenting, gardens
giving out their innermost balm and odour. Late at night they drank tea
in Jenny's own garden. They separated a little after two in the morning,
when the faded Western light still lay warm on a bow of sky, and on the
level of the East it quickened. Jenny felt sure she should long for that
yesterday when she was among foreign scenes, even among high Alps-those
mysterious eminences which seemed in her imagination to know of heaven
and have the dawn of a new life for her beyond their peaks.

Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to
Beauchamp: 'Will you take care of him?' She flung her arms round Dr.
Shrapnel's neck, and gazed at him under troubled eyelids which seemed
to be passing in review every vision of possible harm that might come to
him during her absence; and so she continued gazing, and at no one
but Dr. Shrapnel until the bend of the line cut him from her sight.
Beauchamp was a very secondary person on that occasion, and he was
unused to being so in the society of women--unused to find himself
entirely eclipsed by their interest in another. He speculated on it,
wondering at her concentrated fervency; for he had not supposed her to
possess much warmth.

After she was fairly off on her journey, Dr. Shrapnel mentioned to
Beauchamp a case of a Steynham poacher, whom he had thought it his duty
to supply with means of defence. It was a common poaching case.

Beauchamp was not surprised that Mr. Romfrey and Dr. Shrapnel should
come to a collision; the marvel was that it had never occurred before,
and Beauchamp said at once: 'Oh, my uncle Mr. Romfrey would rather see
them stand their ground than not.' He was disposed to think well of his
uncle. The Jersey bull called him away to Holdesbury.

Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had
to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevisham
dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one. He would have preferred a
positive sum annually. Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques
out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a
system that kept the gallant gentleman on