r Whittlestaff walked off to the
wooded path with his Horace. He did not read it very long. The bits
which he did usually read never amounted to much at a time. He would
take a few lines and then digest them thoroughly, wailing over them
or rejoicing, as the case might be. He was not at the present moment
much given to joy. "Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moves? Parce,
precor, precor." This was the passage to which he turned at the
present moment; and very little was the consolation which he found
in it. What was so crafty, he said to himself, or so vain as that an
old man should hark back to the pleasures of a time of life which was
past and gone! "Non sum qualis eram," he said, and then thought with
shame of the time when he had been jilted by Catherine Bailey,--the
time in which he had certainly been young enough to love and be
loved, had he been as lovable as he had been prone to love. Then he
put the book in his pocket. His latter effort had been to recover
something of the sweetness of life, and not, as had been the poet's,
to drain those dregs to the bottom. But when he got home he bade Mary
tell him what Mr Lowlad had said in his sermon, and was quite cheery
in his manner of picking Mr Lowlad's theology to pieces;--for Mr
Whittlestaff did not altogether agree with Mr Lowlad as to the uses
to be made of the Sabbath.

On the next morning he began to bustle about a little, as was usual
with him before he made a journey; and it did escape him, while he
was talking to Mrs Baggett about a pair of trousers which it turned
out that he had given away last summer, that he meditated a journey
to London on the next day.

"You ain't a-going?" said Mrs Baggett.

"I think I shall."

"Then don't. Take my word for it, sir,--don't." But Mr Whittlestaff
only snubbed her, and nothing more was said about the journey at the
moment.

In the course of the afternoon visitors came. Miss Evelina Hall with
Miss Forrester had been driven into Alresford, and now called in
company with Mr Blake. Mr Blake was full of his own good tidings,
but not so full but that he could remember, before he took his
departure, to say a half whispered word on behalf of John Gordon.
"What do you think, Mr Whittlestaff? Since you were at Little
Alresford we've settled the day."

"You needn't be telling it to everybody about the county," said
Kattie Forrester.

"Why shouldn't I tell it to my particular friends? I am sure Miss
Lawrie will be deligh