a hope . . . I have a hope," these words of his aunt's echoed
often through Howard's brain, in the wakeful night which followed.
Nothing was plain to himself except the fact that things were tangled;
the anxious exaltation which came to him from his talk with his aunt
cleared off like the dying away of the flush of some beaded liquor. "I
must see into this--I must understand what is happening--I must
disentangle it," he said again and again to himself. He was painfully
conscious, as he thought and thought, of his own deep lack both of
moral courage and affection. He liked nothing that was not easy--easy
triumph, easy relations. Somehow the threads of life had knotted
themselves up; he had slipped so lightly into his place here, he had
taken up responsibilities as he might have taken up a flower; he had
meant to be what he called frank and affectionate all round, and now he
felt that he was going to disappoint everyone. Not till the daylight
began to outline the curtain-rifts did he fall asleep; and he woke with
that excited fatigue which comes of sleeplessness.

He came down, he breakfasted alone in the early morning freshness. The
house was all illumined by the sun, but it spread its beauties in vain
before him. The trap came to the door, and when he came out he found to
his surprise that Jack was standing on the steps talking to the
coachman. "I thought I would like to come to the station with you,"
said Jack. Howard was pleased at this. They got in together, and one by
one the scenes so strangely familiar fled past them. Howard looked long
at the Vicarage as he passed, wondering whether Maud was perhaps
looking out. That had been a clumsy, stupid business--his talk with
her! Presently Jack said, "Look here, I am going to say again that I
was perfectly hateful yesterday. I don't know what came over me--I was
thinking aloud."

"Oh, it doesn't matter a bit!" said Howard; "it was my fault really. I
have mismanaged things, I think; and it is good for me to find that
out."

"No, but you haven't," said Jack. "I see it all now. You came down
here, and you made friends with everyone. That was all right; the fact
simply is that I have been jealous and mean. I expected to have you all
to myself--to run you, in fact; and I was vexed at finding you take an
interest in all the others. There, it's better out. I am entirely in
the wrong. You have been awfully good all round, and we shall be
precious dull now that you are going.