enthusiasm Borrowdean's most earnest words, and which militated somewhat
against his reputation as a public speaker, seemed to have fallen from
him. Mannering, recognizing it, answered him gravely enough, though with
no less decision.

"If you are right, Borrowdean," he said, "the suffering will be mine.
Come, your time is short now. Perhaps you had better make your adieux to
my niece and Mrs. Handsell."

They all came out into the drive to see him start. A curious change had
come over the bright spring day. A grey sea-fog had drifted inland, the
sunlight was obscured, the larks were silent. Borrowdean shivered a
little as he turned up his coat-collar.

"So Nature has her little caprices, even--in paradise!" he remarked.

"It will blow over in an hour," Mannering said. "A breath of wind, and
the whole thing is gone."

Borrowdean's farewells were of the briefest. He made no further allusion
to the object of his visit. He departed as one who had been paying an
afternoon call more or less agreeable. Clara waved her hand until he was
out of sight, then she turned somewhat abruptly round and entered the
house. Mannering and Mrs. Handsell remained for a few moments in the
avenue, looking along the road. The sound of the horse's feet could still
be heard, but the trap itself was long since invisible.

"The passing of your friend," she remarked, quietly, "is almost
allegorical. He has gone into the land of ghosts--or are we the ghosts,
I wonder, who loiter here?"