nd wealth delightful.
On the other hand, he had a tyrannous sense of obligation, which kept
him tied to his place and his work--to such work as he had been spending
the morning on. This sense of obligation had for the present withdrawn
him from any very active share in politics. He had come to the
conclusion early in the year, just about the time when, owing to some
rearrangements in the _personnel_ of the Government, the Premier had
made him some extremely flattering overtures, that he must for the
present devote himself to the Court. There were extensive changes and
reforms going on in different parts of the estate: some of the schools
which he owned and mainly supported were being rebuilt and enlarged; and
he had a somewhat original scheme for the extension of adult education
throughout the property very much on his mind--a scheme which must be
organised and carried through by himself apparently, if it was to thrive
at all.

Much of this business was very dreary to him, some of it altogether
distasteful. Since the day of his parting with Marcella Boyce his only
real _pleasures_ had lain in politics or books. Politics, just as they
were growing absorbing to him, must, for a while at any rate, be put
aside; and even books had not fared as well as they might have been
expected to do in the country quiet. Day after day he walked or rode
about the muddy lanes of the estate, doing the work that seemed to him
to be his, as best he could, yet never very certain of its value;
rather, spending his thoughts more and more, with regard to his own
place and function in the world, on a sort of mental apologetic which
was far from stimulating; sorely conscious the while of the unmatched
charm and effectiveness with which his grandfather had gone about the
same business; and as lonely at heart as a man can well be--the wound of
love unhealed, the wound of friendship still deep and unconsoled. To
bring social peace and progress, as he understood them, to this bit of
Midland England a man of first-rate capacities was perhaps sacrificing
what ambition would have called his opportunities. Yet neither was he a
hero to himself nor to the Buckinghamshire farmers and yokels who
depended on him. They had liked the grandfather better, and had become
stolidly accustomed to the grandson's virtues.

The only gleam in the grey of his life since he had determined about
Christmas-time to settle down at the Court had come from Mr. French's
letter.