soared, yet rested, the same quiet night with its delicate heaps of
transparent blue, its cool-glowing moon, its steely stars, and its
something he did not understand. He went home a little quieter of
heart, as if he had heard from afar something sweet and strange.






CHAPTER VII.

THE COUSINS.





George Bascombe was a peculiar development of the present century,
almost of the present generation. In the last century, beyond a
doubt, the description of such a man would have been incredible. I
do not mean that he was the worse or the better for that. There are
types both of good and of evil which to the past would have been
incredible because unintelligible.

It is very hard sometimes for a tolerably honest man, as we have
just seen in the case of Wingfold, to say what he believes, and it
ought to be yet harder to say what another man does not believe;
therefore I shall presume no farther concerning Bascombe in this
respect than to say that the thing he SEEMED most to believe was