ht in gleaming gold on the
shield of Achilles; and then perhaps to pay a last visit with her to the
farm buildings in the warm dusk and watch the cattle coming in from the
fields and the evening feed, and all the shutting up for the night after
the long, hot, busy day: these things had lately made a veritable idyll
of the vicar's life. He felt as though a hundred primitive sensations and
emotions, that he had only talked of or read about before, had at last
become real to him. Oxford memories revived. He actually felt a wish to
look at his Virgil or Theocritus again, such as had never stirred in him
since he had packed his Oxford books to send home, after the sobering
announcement of his third class. After all, it seemed these old fellows
knew something about the earth and its joys!

So that a golden light lay over these past weeks. And in the midst of it
stood the figure of a silent and--as far as he was concerned--rather
difficult woman, without which there would have been no transfiguring
light at all. He confessed to himself that she had never had much to say
to him. But wherever she was she drew the male creature after her. There
was no doubt as to that. She was a good employer--fair, considerate,
intelligent; but it was the _woman_--so the vicar believed--who got her
way.

From which it will be seen that Miss Eleanor Shenstone had some reason
for misgiving, and that the vicar's own peace of mind was in danger. His
standards also were no longer what they were. He had really ceased to
care that Miss Leighton was a Unitarian!

"I suppose you have been horribly busy?" said Rachel to Ellesborough,
when, thanks to the exertions of Janet and the two girls, everybody had
been provided with a first course.

"Not more than usual. Do you mean--" He looked at her, smiling, and
Rachel's eyebrows went up slightly. "Ah, I see--you thought I had
forgotten?"

"Oh, no," she said indifferently. "It is a long way to come."

He flushed a little.

"That never occurred to me for a moment!" he said with emphasis. "But you
said you would have finished with the harvest in a week. So I waited. I
didn't want to be a nuisance."

At which she smiled, a smile that overflowed eyes and lips, and stirred
the senses of the man beside her.

"How is the prisoner?"

"Poor boy! He died the day before yesterday. We did everything we could,
but he had no chance from the first. Hard lines!"

"Why, he might have been home next year!"

"He m