ed descriptive notes of each farm, showing what alterations the
past three months had brought, and setting forth the agricultural
intentions and abilities of the occupier.

John Norton waited the arrival of these accounts with a keen interest:
they were a relish to his life; and without experiencing any revulsion
of feeling, he would lay down a portfolio filled with photographs of
drawings by Leonardo da Vinci--studies of drapery, studies of hands and
feet, realistic studies of thin-lipped women and ecstatic angels with
the light upon their high foreheads--and cheerfully, and even with a
sense of satisfaction, he would untie the bald, prosaic roll of paper,
and seating himself at his window overlooking the long terrace, he would
add up the figures submitted to him, detecting the smallest arithmetical
error, making note of the least delay in payment of any money due, and
questioning the slightest overpayment for work done. The morning hours
fled as he pursued his congenial task; and from time to time he would
let his thoughts wander from the teasing computation of the money that
would be required to make the repairs that a certain farmer had
demanded, to the unworldly quiet of the sacristy; he would think, and
his thoughts contained an evanescent sense of the paradox, of the altar
linen he would have to fold and put away, and of the altar breads he
would presently have to write to London for; and meanwhile his eyes
would follow in delight the black figures of the Jesuits, who, with
cassocks blowing and berrettas set firmly on their heads, walked up and
down the long gravel walks reading their breviaries.

And living thus, half in the persuasive charm of ceremonial, half in
the hard procession of account books, the last three years of John's
life had passed. On coming of age he had spent a few weeks at Thornby
Place, but the place, and especially the country, had appeared to
him so grossly protestant--so entirely occupied with the material
well-to-doness of life--that he declared he longed to breathe again the
breath of his beloved sacristy, that he must away from that close and
oppressive atmosphere of the flesh. Since then, with the exception of a
few visits of a few days he had lived at Stanton College, writing to his
mother not of the business which concerned his property, but of mental
problems and artistic impulses. On business matters he never consulted
her; but he thought it fortunate that she should choose to spe