So I let him gaze into the fire in peace, and all Saturday he was at
the potteries or at the office, very busy about all his plans and also
taking in hand the charge for George Yolland, for both brothers were
going on Monday to take a fortnight's holiday among their relations.
He only came in to dinner, and after it told me very kindly that he
must leave me alone again, for he wanted to see Ben Yolland. A good
person for him to wish to see, "but was all this restlessness?" thought
this foolish Lucy.

When he came in, only just at bed-time, there was something more of
rest, and less of weary sadness about his eyes than I had seen since
the troubles began, and as we wished one another good night he said,
"Lucy, God forgives while He punishes. He is better to us than man.
Yolland says I may be with you at church early to-morrow."

Then my cheeks flushed hot with joy, and I said how thankful I was that
all this had not distracted his thoughts from the subject. "When I
wanted help more than ever?" he said.

So in some ways that was to me at least a gladsome Sunday, though not
half so much at the time as it has become in remembrance, and I could
not guess how much of conscious peace or joy Harold felt, as, for the
first and only time, he and I knelt together on the chancel step.

He said nothing, but he had quite recovered his usual countenance and
manner, only looking more kind and majestic than ever, as I, his fond
aunt, thought, when we went among the children after the school
service, to give them the little dainties they had missed in his
absence; and he smiled when they came round him with their odd little
bits of chatter.

We sat over the fire in the evening, and talked a little of surface
things, but that died away, and after a quarter of an hour or so, he
looked up at me and said, "And what next?"

"What are we to do, do you mean?" I said, for I had been thinking how
all his schemes of life had given way. We spoke of it together. "Old
Eu did not want him," as he said, and though there was much for him to
do at the Hydriot works and the Mission Chapel, the Reading Room, the
Association for Savings, and all the rest which needed his eye, yet for
Viola's peace he thought he ought not to stay, and the same cause
hindered the schemes he had once shared with Dermot; he had cut himself
loose from Australia, and there seemed nothing before him. "There were
the City Missions," he said, wearily, for he did not lov