ut the mother--" He shook his head.

"You think she's in a bad way?"

"Send her back to Italy as soon as you can. She's pining for her own
people. Life's been a bit too hard for her, and she never was but a poor
thing. Well, I must go."

Tatham stayed his horse. Undershaw, added as though by an afterthought:

"I was at Green Cottage this morning. Mrs. Penfold's rather knocked up
with nursing her sister. She chattered to me about Faversham. He used to
be a good deal there but they've broken with him too; apparently, because
of Mainstairs. Miss Lydia couldn't stand it. She was _so_ devoted to the
people."

The man on horseback made some inaudible reply, and they began to talk of
a couple of sworn inquiries about to be held on the Threlfall estate by
the officials of the Local Government Board, into the housing and
sanitation of three of the chief villages on Melrose's property. The
department had been induced to move by a committee of local gentlemen, in
which Tatham had taken a leading part. The whole affair had reduced
itself indeed so far to a correspondence duel between Tatham, as
representing a scandalized neighbourhood, and Faversham, as representing
Melrose.

Tatham's letters, in which a man, with no natural gift for the pen, had
developed a surprising amount of effective sarcasm, had all appeared in
the local press; with Faversham's ingenious and sophistical replies.
Tatham discussed them now with Undershaw in a tone of passionate
bitterness. The doctor said little. He had his own shrewd ideas on the
situation.

* * * * *

When Undershaw left him, Tatham rode on, up the forest lane, till again
the trees fell away, the wide valley with its boundary fells opened
before him, and again his eye sought through the windy dusk for the
far-gleaming light that spoke to him of Lydia. His mind was full of fresh
agitation, stirred by Undershaw's remark about her. The idea of a breach
between Lydia and Faversham was indeed most welcome, since it seemed to
restore Lydia to that pedestal from which it had been so hard and strange
to see her descend. It gave him back the right to worship her! And yet,
the notion did nothing--now--to revive any hope for himself. He kept the
distant light in view for long, his heart full of a tenderness which,
though he did not know it, had already parted with much of the bitterness
of unsatisfied passion. Unconsciously, the healing process was on its
way; th