his fingers the silver lines
which marked the hair on either side of her brows. He could see that she
trembled and that her lips set themselves in hard self-conquest.

'What do you wish me to do when we have left the Manor?'

His own voice was hurried between two quiverings of the throat; his
mother's only whispered in reply.

'That is for your own consideration, Hubert.'

'With your counsel, mother.'

'My counsel?'

'I ask it I will follow it. I wish to be guided by you.'

He knelt by her, and his mother pressed his head against her bosom.

Later, she asked--

'Did you call also on the Walthams?'

He shook his head.

'Should you not do so, dear?

'I think that must be later.'

The subject was not pursued.

The next day was Saturday. In the afternoon Hubert took a walk which had
been his favourite one ever since he could remember, every step of the
way associated with recollections of childhood, boyhood, or youth. It
was along the lane which began in a farmyard close by the Manor and
climbed with many turnings to the top of Stanbury Hill. This was ever
the first route re-examined by his brother Godfrey and himself on
their return from school at holiday-time. It was a rare region for
bird-nesting, so seldom was it trodden save by a few farm-labourers
at early morning or when the day's work was over. Hubert passed with
a glance of recognition the bramble in which he had found his first
spink's nest, the shadowed mossy bank whence had fluttered the hapless
wren just when the approach of two prowling youngsters should have
bidden her keep close. Boys on the egg-trail are not wont to pay much
attention to the features of the country; but Hubert remembered that
at a certain meadow-gate he had always rested for a moment to view the
valley, some mute presage of things unimagined stirring at his heart.
Was it even then nineteenth century? Not for him, seeing that the life
of each of us reproduces the successive ages of the world. Belwick,
roaring a few miles away, was but an isolated black patch on the earth's
beauty, not, as he now understood it, a malignant cancer-spot, spreading
day by day, corrupting, an augury of death. In those days it had seemed
fast in the order of things that Wanley Manor should be his home through
life; how otherwise? Was it not the abiding-place of the Eldons from of
old? Who had ever hinted at revolution? He knew now that revolution
had been at work from an earlier time than that; w