n of Nicholas Long's, who sat with her husband and children.

To make himself as locally harmonious as possible, Mr. Bellston remarked
to his companion on the scene--'It does one's heart good,' he said, 'to
see these simple peasants enjoying themselves.'

'O Mr. Bellston!' exclaimed Christine; 'don't be too sure about that word
"simple"! You little think what they see and meditate! Their reasonings
and emotions are as complicated as ours.'

She spoke with a vehemence which would have been hardly present in her
words but for her own relation to Nicholas. The sense of that produced
in her a nameless depression thenceforward. The young man, however,
still followed her up.

'I am glad to hear you say it,' he returned warmly. 'I was merely
attuning myself to your mood, as I thought. The real truth is that I
know more of the Parthians, and Medes, and dwellers in Mesopotamia--almost
of any people, indeed--than of the English rustics. Travel and
exploration are my profession, not the study of the British peasantry.'

Travel. There was sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the
course she had urged upon her lover, to lend Bellston's account of
himself a certain interest in Christine's ears. He might perhaps be able
to tell her something that would be useful to Nicholas, if their dream
were carried out. A door opened from the hall into the garden, and she
somehow found herself outside, chatting with Mr. Bellston on this topic,
till she thought that upon the whole she liked the young man. The garden
being his uncle's, he took her round it with an air of proprietorship;
and they went on amongst the Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and
through a door to the fruit-garden. A green-house was open, and he went
in and cut her a bunch of grapes.

'How daring of you! They are your uncle's.'

'O, he don't mind--I do anything here. A rough old buffer, isn't he?'

She was thinking of her Nic, and felt that, by comparison with her
present acquaintance, the farmer more than held his own as a fine and
intelligent fellow; but the harmony with her own existence in little
things, which she found here, imparted an alien tinge to Nicholas just
now. The latter, idealized by moonlight, or a thousand miles of
distance, was altogether a more romantic object for a woman's dream than
this smart new-lacquered man; but in the sun of afternoon, and amid a
surrounding company, Mr. Bellston was a very tolerable companion.