t the majority only stared
at her as a stranger. She felt, somehow, as if she would never be
anything else but a stranger here. When she had passed through the
village to the end of it, where the "Chequers," the forge, and the
wheelwright's shed stood, she came to a wide common. Looking across it,
she saw the river, and found her way home by the mill and the
harvest-fields.

It would have enhanced Bessie's pleasure, though not her happiness
perhaps, if she could have betaken herself to building castles in the
Woldshire air, but the moment she began to indulge in reverie her
thoughts flew to the Forest. No glamour of pride, enthusiasm, or any
sort of delightful hope mistified her imagination as to her real
indifference towards Abbotsmead. When she reached the garden she sat
down amongst the roses, and gazed at the beautiful old flower-woven
walls that she had admired yesterday, and felt like a visitor growing
weary of the place. Even while her bodily eyes were upon it, her mind's
eye was filled with a vision of the green slopes of the wilderness
garden at Brook, and the beeches laving their shadows in the sweet
running water.

"I believe I am homesick," she said. "I cannot care for this place. I
should have had a better chance of taking to it kindly if my grandfather
had let me go home for a little while. Everything is an effort here."
And it is to be feared that she gave way again, and fretted in a manner
that Madame Fournier would have grieved to see. But there was no help
for it; her heart was sore, and tears relieved it.

* * * * *

Mr. Fairfax was at home to dinner. He returned from Norminster jaded and
out of spirits. Now, Bessie, though she did not love him (though she
felt it a duty to assert and reassert that fact to herself, lest she
should forget it), felt oddly pained when she looked into his face and
saw that he was dull; to be dull signified to be unhappy in Bessie's
vocabulary. But timidity tied her tongue. It was not until Jonquil had
left them to themselves that they attempted any conversation. Then Mr.
Fairfax remarked, "You have been making a tour of investigation,
Elizabeth: you have been into the village?"

Bessie said that she had, and that she had gone into the church. Then
all at once an impulse came upon her to ask, "Why did you let my parents
go so far away? was it so very wrong in them to marry?"

"No, not wrong at all. It is written, 'A man shall leave his