deep in the gullies. The grandest air in England, he had heard say.

His mistress kept him to the discourse, for the comfort of hearing hard
bald matter-of-fact; and she was amused and rebuked by his assumption
that she must be entertaining an anxiety about master's favourite mare.
But, ah! that Diana had delayed in choosing a mate; had avoided her
disastrous union with perhaps a more imposing man, to see the true beauty
of masculine character in Mr. Redworth, as he showed himself to-day. How
could he have doubted succeeding? One grain more of faith in his energy,
and Diana might have been mated to the right husband for her--an open-
minded clear-faced English gentleman. Her speculative ethereal mind
clung to bald matter-of-fact to-day. She would have vowed that it was
the sole potentially heroical. Even Brisby partook of the reflected
rays, and he was very benevolently considered by her. She dismissed him
only when his recounting of the stages of Bertha's journey began to
fatigue her and deaden the medical efficacy of him and his like.
Stretched on the sofa, she watched the early sinking sun in South-western
cloud, and the changes from saffron to intensest crimson, the crown of a
November evening, and one of frost.


Redworth struck on a southward line from chalk-ridge to sand, where he
had a pleasant footing in familiar country, under beeches that browned
the ways, along beside a meadowbrook fed by the heights, through pines
and across deep sand-ruts to full view of weald and Downs. Diana had
been with him here in her maiden days. The coloured back of a coach put
an end to that dream. He lightened his pocket, surveying the land as he
munched. A favourable land for rails: and she had looked over it: and he
was now becoming a wealthy man: and she was a married woman straining the
leash. His errand would not bear examination, it seemed such a desperate