his brains took another shot at Mr. Adister, this time without
penetrating. He could very well have seen the matter he disliked in a
man that he disliked; but the father of Adiante had touched him with the
gift of the miniature.

Patrick was not asked to postpone his departure from Earlsfont, nor was
he invited to come again. Mr. Adister drove him to the station in the
early morning, and gave him a single nod from the phaeton-box for a good-
bye. Had not Caroline assured him at the leave-taking between them that
he had done her uncle great good by his visit, the blank of the usual
ceremonial phrases would have caused him to fancy himself an intruder
courteously dismissed, never more to enter the grand old Hall. He was
further comforted by hearing the stationmaster's exclamation of
astonishment and pleasure at the sight of the squire 'in his place'
handling the reins, which had not been witnessed for many a day and
so it appeared that the recent guest had been exceptionally complimented.
'But why not a warm word, instead of turning me off to decipher a bit of
Egyptian on baked brick,' he thought, incurably Celtic as he was.

From the moment when he beheld Mr. Adister's phaeton mounting a hill that
took the first leap for the Cambrian highlands, up to his arrival in
London, scarcely one of his 'ideas' darted out before Patrick, as they
were in the habit of doing, like the enchanted bares of fairyland,
tempting him to pursue, and changing into the form of woman ever, at some
turn of the chase. For as he had travelled down to Earlsfont in the
state of ignorance and hopefulness, bearing the liquid brains of that
young condition, so did his acquisition of a particular fact destructive
of hope solidify them about it as he travelled back: in other words, they
were digesting what they had taken in. Imagination would not have
stirred for a thousand fleeting hares: and principally, it may be,