eary unto death
of the dreary routine of work and the still drearier routine of his
uncle's sick-room, he recalled with a bitter smile how Elisabeth used to
say that the gloom and smoke of the furnaces was really a pillar of
cloud to show how God was watching over the people at the Osierfield as
He watched over them in the wilderness. Because she had forgotten to be
gracious to him, he concluded that God had forgotten to be gracious to
him also--a not uncommon error of human wisdom; but though his heart was
wounded and his days darkened by her injustice toward him, he never
blamed her, even in his inmost thoughts. He was absolutely loyal to
Elisabeth.

One grim consolation he had--and that was the conviction that he had not
won, and never could have won, Elisabeth's love; and that, therefore,
poverty or riches were matters of no moment to him. Had he felt that
temporal circumstances were the only bar between him and happiness, his
position as her paid manager would have been unendurable; but now she
had taught him that it was he himself, and not any difference in their
respective social positions, which really stood between herself and him;
and, that being so, nothing else had any power to hurt him. Wealth,
unshared by Elisabeth, would have been no better than want, he said to
himself; success, uncrowned by her, would have been equivalent to
failure. When Christopher was in Australia he succeeded in tracing
George Farringdon as far as Broken Hill, and there he found poor
George's grave. He learned that George had left a widow and one son, who
had left the place immediately after George's death; but no one could
give him any further information as to what had subsequently become of
these two. And he was obliged at last to abandon the search and return
to England, without discovering what had happened to the widow and
child.

Some years after his nephew's fruitless journey to Australia Richard
Smallwood died; and though the old man had been nothing but a burden
during the last few years of his life, Christopher missed him sorely
when he was gone. It was something even to have a childish old man to
love him, and smile at his coming; now there was nobody belonging to
him, and he was utterly alone.

But the years which had proved so dark to Christopher had been full of
brightness and interest to Elisabeth. She had fulfilled her intention of
studying at the Slade School, and she had succeeded in her work beyond
her wildes