d at
Teddington. Wilfrid was due for a sitting this Wednesday morning, and he
went down into the country, intending to be back for lunch and the House
of Commons. But the weather was magnificent, and, the sitting over,
truant thoughts began to assail the young legislator. Bushey Park was at
hand, with its chestnut avenue leading to Hampton Court. A ramble of
indefinite duration was, in his present frame of mind, much more
attractive than the eloquence of independent members. He determined to
take a holiday.

A very leisurely stroll across the park brought him to the King's Arms,
and the sight of the hostelry suggested pleasant thoughts of sundry
refreshing viands and cooling liquors. He entered and lunched. It was a
holiday, and a truant holiday; he allowed himself champagne. When he
came forth again, his intention to stroll through the galleries of the
Palace had given way before the remembered shadow of the chestnuts; he
returned to the park, and, after idly watching the fish in the shallow
water of the round lake, strayed away into cool retreats, where the
grass irresistibly invited to recumbency. He threw himself down, and let
his eyes dream upon the delicate blades and stalks and leafage which one
so seldom regards. If he chose to gaze further, there were fair tracts
of shadowed sward, with sunny gleamings scattered where the trees were
thinner, and above him the heaven of clustering leaves, here of
impenetrable dark-green, there translucent-golden. A rustling whisper,
in the air and on the ground, was the only voice that came thither.

He had set himself to think of Beatrice. He purposed writing her a long
letter to-night, wherein he would do his best to make her understand the
light in which the past appeared to him, and how little those memories
had to do with the present and its love and its duty. To be sure, he
could not use the words of very truth. He would much have preferred to
speak with unflinching honesty, to confess that he had, even of late,
often dwelt on the thought of Emily with tenderness, with something of
heart-ache; but that the new love had, for all that, triumphed over the
old, and would henceforth grow to perfectness. But the character of
Beatrice would not allow this; in her, feeling was too predominant over
intellect; she could not recognise in this very frankness the assurance
of an affection which would end by being no less than the utmost she
demanded. He had to seek for subtleties of e