And the unheard presently broke in upon the heard.

"You mentioned Elsmere just now," said Barron, in a moment's pause, and
with apparent irrelevance. "Did you know that his widow is now staying
within a mile of this place? Some people called Flaxman have taken
Maudeley End, and Mrs. Flaxman is a sister of Mrs. Elsmere. Mrs. Elsmere
and her daughter are going to settle for the summer in the cottage near
Forked Pond. Mrs. Elsmere seems to have been ill for the first time in
her life, and has had to give up some of her work."

"Mrs. Elsmere!" said Meynell, raising his eyebrows. "I saw her once
twenty years ago at the New Brotherhood, and have never forgotten the
vision of her face. She must be almost an old woman."

"Miss Puttenham says she is quite beautiful still, in a wonderful, severe
way. I think she never shared Elsmere's opinions?"

"Never."

The two fell silent, both minds occupied with the same story and the same
secret comparisons. Robert Elsmere, the Rector of Murewell, in Surrey,
had made a scandal in the Church, when Meynell was still a lad, by
throwing up his orders under the pressure of New Testament criticism, and
founding a religious brotherhood among London workingmen for the
promotion of a simple and commemorative form of Christianity.

Elsmere, a man of delicate physique, had died prematurely, worn out by
the struggle to find new foothold for himself and others; but something
in his personality, and in the nature of his effort--some brilliant,