ed to be saying to
him all the time, 'You are not interesting--no, not a bit! You are
tiresome, and I see through you, but I must talk to you, I suppose,
_faute de mieux_.'

Long before the little party separated for the night Langham had given
it up, and had betaken himself to Catherine, reminding himself with some
sharpness that he had come down to study his friend's life, rather than
the humours of a provoking girl. How still the summer night was round
the isolated rectory; how fresh and spotless were all the appointments
of the house; what a Quaker neatness and refinement everywhere! He drank
in the scent of air and flowers with which the rooms were filled; for
the first time his fastidious sense was pleasantly conscious of
Catherine's grave beauty; and even the mystic ceremonies of family
prayer had a certain charm for him, pagan as he was. How much dignity
and persuasiveness it has still, he thought to himself, this commonplace
country life of ours, on its best sides!

Half-past ten arrived. Rose just let him touch her hand; Catherine gave
him a quiet good-night, with various hospitable wishes for his nocturnal
comfort, and the ladies withdrew. He saw Robert open the door for his
wife, and catch her thin white fingers as she passed him with all the
secrecy and passion of a lover.

Then they plunged into the study, he and Robert, and smoked their fill.
The study was an astonishing medley. Books, natural history specimens, a
half-written sermon, fishing-rods, cricket-bats, a huge medicine
cupboard--all the main elements of Elsmere's new existence were
represented there. In the drawing-room with his wife and his
sister-in-law he had been as much of a boy as ever; here clearly he was
a man, very much in earnest. What about? What did it all come to? Can
the English country clergyman do much with his life and his energies?
Langham approached the subject with his usual scepticism.

Robert for a while, however, did not help him to solve it. He fell at
once to talking about the squire, as though it cleared his mind to talk
out his difficulties even to so ineffective a counsellor as Langham.
Langham, indeed, was but faintly interested in the squire's crimes as a
landlord, but there was a certain interest to be got out of the struggle
in Elsmere's mind between the attractiveness of the squire, as one of
the most difficult and original personalities of English letters, and
that moral condemnation of him as a man of posses