to her first choice, till the lover seen absolutely overpowered
the lover remembered, or from a wish not to lose his love till sure of
the love of another. But to Stephen Smith the motive involved in the
latter alternative made it untenable where Elfride was the actor.

He mused on her letters to him, in which she had never mentioned a
syllable concerning Knight. It is desirable, however, to observe that
only in two letters could she possibly have done so. One was written
about a week before Knight's arrival, when, though she did not mention
his promised coming to Stephen, she had hardly a definite reason in her
mind for neglecting to do it. In the next she did casually allude to
Knight. But Stephen had left Bombay long before that letter arrived.

Stephen looked at the black form of the adjacent house, where it cut a
dark polygonal notch out of the sky, and felt that he hated the spot.
He did not know many facts of the case, but could not help instinctively
associating Elfride's fickleness with the marriage of her father, and
their introduction to London society. He closed the iron gate bounding
the shrubbery as noiselessly as he had opened it, and went into the
grassy field. Here he could see the old vicarage, the house alone that
was associated with the sweet pleasant time of his incipient love for
Elfride. Turning sadly from the place that was no longer a nook in
which his thoughts might nestle when he was far away, he wandered in the
direction of the east village, to reach his father's house before they
retired to rest.

The nearest way to the cottage was by crossing the park. He did not
hurry. Happiness frequently has reason for haste, but it is seldom
that desolation need scramble or strain. Sometimes he paused under the
low-hanging arms of the trees, looking vacantly on the ground.

Stephen was standing thus, scarcely less crippled in thought than he was
blank in vision, when a clear sound permeated the quiet air about him,
and spread on far beyond. The sound was the stroke of a bell from the
tower of East Endelstow Church, which stood in a dell not forty yards
from Lord Luxellian's mansion, and within the park enclosure. Another
stroke greeted his ear, and gave character to both: then came a slow
succession of them.

'Somebody is dead,' he said aloud.

The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being tolled.

An unusual feature in the tolling was that it had not been begun
according to th