sharing. He had suffered much; but these last years had been quiet, free
from despair at least, and he wished to drift a little longer with the
tide of this time. Why strive to hasten events? If this thing was to be,
it would be. So he had thought of his daughter's marriage. Fancies had
long hung about the confines of his mind, but nothing had struck him
with the full force of a thought until suddenly he understood the exact
purport of his mission to Stanton College. He leaned forward as if he
were going to tell the driver to return, but before he could do so the
lodge-keeper opened the great gate, and the hansom cab rattled under the
archway.

Then he viewed the scheme in general outline and in remote detail. It
was very simple. Lizzie had been to Shoreham, and had taken Kitty away
with her; he had been sent to Stanton College to beg John Norton to
return to Thornby Place, and to say what he could in favour of marriage
generally. This was very compromising. He had been deceived; Lizzie had
deceived him. She had no right to do such a thing; and, striving to
determine on a line of conduct, Mr Hare examined abstractedly the place
he was passing through.

In large and serpentine curves the road wound through a wood of small
beech trees--so small that in the November dishevelment the plantations
were like so much brushwood; and, lying behind the wind-swept opening,
gravel walks appeared in grey fragments, and the green spaces of the
cricket field with a solitary divine reading his breviary. The drive
turned and turned again in great sloping curves; more divines were
passed, and then there came a long terrace with a balustrade and a view
of the open country, now full of mist. And to see the sharp spire of
the distant church you had to look closely, and slanting slowly upwards
the great plain drew a long and melancholy line across the sky. The