sions and ordinary
human responsibilities with which the young reforming rector was clearly
penetrated. So that, as long as he could smoke under it, he was content
to let his companion describe to him Mr. Wendover's connection with the
property, his accession to it in middle life after a long residence in
Germany, his ineffectual attempts to play the English country gentleman,
and his subsequent complete withdrawal from the life about him.

'You have no idea what a queer sort of existence he lives in that huge
place,' said Robert with energy. 'He is not unpopular exactly with the
poor down here. When they want to belabour anybody they lay on at the
agent, Henslowe. On the whole, I have come to the conclusion the poor
like a mystery. They never see him; when he is here the park is shut up;
the common report is that he walks at night; and he lives alone in that
enormous house with his books. The county folk have all quarrelled with
him, or nearly. It pleases him to get a few of the humbler people about,
clergy, professional men, and so on, to dine with him sometimes. And he
often fills the Hall, I am told, with London people for a day or two.
But otherwise he knows no one, and nobody knows him.'

'But you say he has a widowed sister? How does she relish the kind of
life?'

'Oh; by all accounts,' said the rector with a shrug, 'she is as little
like other people as himself. A queer elfish little creature, they say,
as fond of solitude down here as the squire, and full of hobbies. In her
youth she was about the court. Then she married a canon of Warham, one
of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is a bright
little cousin of hers, a certain Lady Helen Varley, who lives near here,
and tells me stories of her. She must be the most whimsical little
aristocrat imaginable. She liked her husband apparently, but she never
got over leaving London and the fashionable world, and is as hungry now,
after her long fast, for titles and big-wigs, as though she were the
purest parvenu. The squire of course makes mock of her, and she has no
influence with him. However, there is something naive in the stories
they tell of her. I feel as if I might get on with _her_. But the
squire!'

And the rector, having laid down his pipe, took to studying his boots
with a certain dolefulness.

Langham, however, who always treated the subjects of conversation
presented to him as an epicure treats foods, felt at this point that he
had h