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On the following morning Robert Asquith returned to London, to make ready for his grouse-shooting expedition on Wednesday. Rhoda Meres remained at Knightswell one more day. On Tuesday she was not at all well. Between Ada and her very fair relations existed; the girls were not intimate, but they generally discovered a common ground for companionship, which was more than could be said of Ada’s attitude towards any other female acquaintance. When Rhoda kept her room in the morning it was natural that Ada should go to her, and seek to be of comfort. She could be of none, it proved; after a few efforts, Rhoda plainly begged to be left alone with her headache.

At midday Mrs. Clarendon herself entered the room, bringing in her hand a little tray. Rhoda was by this time sitting in a deep chair, and professed herself better. She had not slept during the night, she said, and was feeling the effects; doubtless the unwonted excitement of the party had been too much for her. Isabel talked to her quietly, and saw that she ate something, then sat by her, holding the girl’s hands.

“I have a letter from your father this morning,” she said. “He seems to miss you sadly. But for that, I should keep you longer.”

“I’m afraid he must get used to it,” was Rhoda’s reply, cheerlessly uttered.

“Why, dear?”

“I shall not stay at home.”

“What shall you do?” Isabel asked quietly.

“Go somewhere—go anywhere—go and find work and earn a living!”

“But I think you have work enough at home.”

“I am not indispensable.”

“I believe you are. I don’t think your father can do without you.”

“Why can’t he? Hilda is at home quite enough to look after the servant. What else does he want with me?”

“Much else, dear Rhoda. Your sympathy, your aid in his work, your child’s love. Remember that your father’s life is not a very happy one. You are old enough to understand that. You know, I think, that it never has been very happy. Can’t you find work enough in cheering him?”

For reply the girl burst into tears.

“Cheer him!” she sobbed. “How can I cheer any one? How can I give comfort to others when my own life is bare of it? It’s easy for you to show me my duty, Mrs. Clarendon. Tell me how I am to do it!”

Isabel put her arm about the shaken form, and there was soothing in the warm current of her blood.

“I cannot tell you how to do it, Rhoda,” she said, when the sobs had half stilled themselves. “My own is too much for me. But I can—with such force of love as is in me—implore you to guard against mistakes, beseech you not to heap up trouble for yourself through want of experience, want of knowledge of the world, through refusal to let older ones see and judge for you. My own life has been full of lessons, though I dare say I have not suffered as much as others would have done in my place, for I have a temperament which easily—only too easily—throws aside care. If only I could live it over again with all my experience to guide me!”

“You don’t understand me,” said the girl, with a fretfulness she tried to subdue. “You don’t know what my trials are. No amount of experience could help me.”

“Not against suffering; no. I won’t talk nonsense, however well it may sound. But you speak of taking active steps, Rhoda. There experience can give very real aid.”

“Mrs. Clarendon,” said Rhoda, after a short silence, “I’m afraid I haven’t a very good disposition. I don’t feel to my father as I ought; I don’t care as much for anybody as I ought—for any of my relations, my friends. I’m not happy, and that seems to absorb me.”

“You don’t care for me, Rhoda?—not for me, a little bit of sincere affection?”

The voice melted the girl’s heart, so wonderful was the power it had.

“I love you with all my heart!” she cried, throwing her arms about Isabel. “You make me feel it!”

“Dear, and that is what I cannot live without,” said Isabel. “I must have friends who love me—simple, pure, unselfish love. I have spent my life in trying to make such friends. I haven’t always succeeded, you know, just because I have my faults—oh, heaps of them! and often I’m as selfish as any one could be. But a good many do love me, I think and trust. Love has a different meaning for you, hasn’t it, Rhoda? I don’t think I have ever known that other kind, and now I certainly never shall. It asks too much, I think; mine is not a passionate nature. But if you could know how happy I have often been in the simple affection of young girls who come and tell me their troubles. If I had had children, I should have spoilt them dreadfully.”

Her eyes wandered, the speech died for a moment on her lips.

“Rhoda,” she continued, taking both the girl’s hands, “some day, and before long, I shall want your love and that of all my dear friends more than ever. Something—never mind, I shall want it, and I have tried so hard to earn it, because I looked forward and knew. All selfish calculation, you see,” she added, with a nervous laugh, “but then it’s only kindness I ask for. You won’t take yours away? You won’t do anything that will put a distance between us? Nothing foolish? Nothing ill-considered? You see, I’ll put it all on my own account. I can’t spare you, I can’t spare one who loves me!”

Mrs. Clarendon accompanied Rhoda next day to Winstoke station. On her way back she drove to several cottages where it was her custom to call, and where the dwellers had good cause to welcome her. Of sundry things which occurred to her in the course of these visits, she desired to speak with Mr. Vissian, and accordingly stopped at the rectory before driving through her own gates. The front door stood open, and with the freedom of intimacy, she walked straight in and tapped at the parlour door, which was ajar. That room proving empty, she passed to the next, which was the rectors study, and here too tapped. A voice bade her enter—to her surprise an unfamiliar voice. She turned the handle, however, and looked in.

A young man was sitting in the rector’s easy-chair, a book in his hand. He rose on seeing an unknown lady. They looked at each other for a moment, with a little natural embarrassment on both sides. Each rapidly arrived at a conclusion as to the other’s identity, and the smile in both cases expressed a certain interest.

“Pardon me,” Mrs. Clarendon said; “I am seeking the rector, or Mrs. Vissian; Can you tell me if either is at home?”

“The rector, I believe, is still away,” was the reply, “but Mrs. Vissian is in the garden. I will tell her.”

But in the same moment Mrs. Vissian appeared, carrying a basket of fruit. She had garden gloves on her hands. Behind her came Master Percy. There was exchange of greetings; then, in response to a look from Mrs. Clarendon, the youthful matron went through a ceremony of introduction. Mrs. Clarendon and Mr. Kingcote were requested henceforth to know each other, society sanctioning the acquaintance.

“Your name is already familiar to me,” said Isabel; “I have been looking forward to the pleasure of meeting you some day. It was in fear and trembling that I knocked at the sanctuary; Mr. Vissian will congratulate himself on having left a guardian. Those precious volumes; who knows, if there had been no one here——?”

“And how are you, Percy?” she asked, turning to the child, who had come into the library, and holding to him her hand. Percy, instead of merely giving his own, solemnly knelt upon one knee, and raised the gloved fingers to his lips. His mother broke into a merry laugh; Mrs. Clarendon smiled, glanced at Kingcote, and looked back at the boy with surprise.

“That is most chivalrous behaviour, Percy,” she said.

Mrs. Vissian still laughed. Percy, who had gone red, eyed her reproachfully.

“You know I am a page to-day, mother,” he said, “that’s how a page ought to behave. Isn’t it, Mr. Kingcote?”

Isabel drew him to her and kissed him; a glow of pleasure showed through her smiling.

“Percy is a great many different people in a week,” explained Mrs. Vissian. “To-morrow he’ll be a pirate, and then I’m afraid he wouldn’t show such politeness.”

“That shows you don’t understand, mother,” remarked the boy. “Pirates are always polite to beautiful ladies.”

There was more laughter at this. Kingcote stood leaning against the mantelpiece, smiling gravely. Percy caught his eye, and, still confused and rather indignant, went to his side.

“Percy still has ideals,” Kingcote observed, laying his hand on the child’s head.

“Ah, they’re so hard to preserve!” sighed Isabel. Then, turning to Mrs. Vissian, “I want a word or two with you about things that are painfully real. Shall we go into the sitting-room?”

She bowed and said a word of adieu to Kingcote, who stood looking at the doorway through which she had disappeared.

Two days later fresh guests arrived at Knightswell, and for a week there was much riding and driving, lawn-tennis, and straying about the garden and park by moonlight. Then the house of a sudden emptied itself of all its occupants save Ada Warren. Mrs. Clarendon herself went to stay at two country places in succession. She was back again about the middle of September. Ada and she found themselves once more alone together.

Early on the day after her arrival Isabel took a turn of several miles on horseback. She had risen in the morning with somewhat less than her customary flow of spirits, and the exercise would no doubt help her to become herself again. It was a very soft and balmy autumn day; the sky was cloudy, but not with presage of immediate rain, and the distance was wonderfully clear, the rolling downs pencilled on sky of bluish gray. Sounds seemed unnaturally’ audible; she often stayed her horse to listen, finding something very consonant with her mood in the voices of the resting year. When she trotted on again, the sound of the hoofs on the moist road affected her with its melancholy monotony.

“Am I growing old?” she said to herself.

“It is a bad sign when riding fails to put me into good spirits. Perhaps I shall not care to hunt; a good thing, if it prove so. I lose less.”

She was returning to Winstoke by the old road from Salcot East, and presently rode past the cottage at Wood End. A window on the ground floor was open, and, as she went by, Kingcote himself came to it, having no doubt heard the approaching horse. Isabel bowed.

“Why didn’t I stop and speak?” she questioned herself. “It would have been kind. Indeed, I meant to, but my hands somehow wouldn’t obey me at the moment.”

A hundred yards farther she met a village lad, carrying a very unusual burden, nothing less than a book, an octavo volume. Isabel drew rein.

“What have you got there, Johnny Nancarrow?” she asked.

The youngster turned the book over, regarding it much as if it were a live thing.

“Fayther picked un oop corner o’ Short’s Aacre,” he replied. “He says it b’longs to the stranger at Wood End, and I’ve got to taake it there.”

“Let me look.”

It was a volume of the works of Sir Thomas Browne. Turning to the fly-leaf, Isabel saw the name, “Bernard Kingcote,” written there.

“How did it come at the corner of Short’s Acre, I wonder?”

“Fayther says the stranger ligs aboot, spellin’ over his books, and he’ll have left this behind un by hap.”

She turned over the leaves, absently; then her face brightened.

“Don’t trouble to go any farther, Johnny,” she said. “I’ll take the book to its owner myself; I know him. And here’s something for your good intention.”

She turned her horse. The boy stood watching her, a gape of pleasure on his face, and still gazed, cap in hand, till a turn of the road hid her; then he jogged back home, whistling. The sixpence had something to do with it, no doubt; yet more, perhaps, the smile from the Lady of Knightswell.

Isabel rode at a very gentle pace; once she seemed on the point of checking her horse. But she was already within sight of the cottage, and she went at walking pace up to the door. The window still stood open, and she could see into the room, but it was empty. Its appearance surprised her. The flagged floor had no kind of covering; in the middle stood a plain deal table, with a writing desk and books upon it, and against the opposite wall was a bookcase full of volumes. A less luxurious abode it would not have been easy to construct. The sides of the room had no papering, only whitewash; one did not look for pictures or ornaments, and there were none. A scent of tobacco, however, came from within.

“One comfort, at all events, poor fellow,” passed through her mind. “He must have been smoking there a minute or two ago. Where is he now?”

She knocked at the door with the handle of her whip. At once she heard a step approaching, and the door was opened. Kingcote stood gazing at her in surprise; he did not smile, and did not speak. He had the face of one who has been in reverie, and is with difficulty collecting himself.

“How do you do, Mr. Kingcote?” began Isabel. “I am come to restore to you a book which has been found somewhere in the fields. I fear it has suffered a little, though not so much as it might have done.”

He took the volume, and reflected for an instant before replying.

“I thank you very much, Mrs. Clarendon. Yes; I had quite forgotten that I left it behind me. It was yesterday. I should have been sorry to have lost him.”

“The book is evidently a favourite; you handle it with affection.”

“Yes, I value Sir Thomas. You know him?”

“I grieve to say that I hear his name for the first time.”

“Oh, you would like him; at least, I think you would. He is one of the masters of prose. I wish I could read you one or two things.”

“I’m sure I should be very glad. Will you come and lunch with us to-day, and bring the book with you?”

Kingcote had his eyes fixed upon her; a smile gathered in them.

“I’m afraid——” he began; then, raising his eyebrows with a humorous expression, “I am in no way prepared for the ceremony of visiting, Mrs. Clarendon.”

“Oh, but it will be in no way a ceremony!” Isabel exclaimed. “You will do me a great pleasure if you come wholly at your ease, just as you would visit Mr. Vissian. Why not?” she added quickly. “I am alone, except for the presence of Miss Warren, who always lives with me.”

“Thank you,” said Kingcote, “with pleasure I will come.”

“We lunch at half-past one. And you will bring Sir Thomas? And let me keep him a little, to remove the reproach of my ignorance?”

Kingcote smiled, but made no other reply. She leaned down from her horse and gave him her hand; he touched it very gently, feeling that little Percy Vissian’s fashion of courtesy would have been far more becoming than the mere grasp one gives to equals. Then she rode away. Isabel was, as we know, a perfect horsewoman, and her figure showed well in the habit. Kingcote fell back into his reverie.

He had but one change of garments at all better than those he wore; not having donned them for more than two months, he found himself very presentable, by comparison, when he had completed his toilet before the square foot of looking-glass which hung against the wall in his bedroom. His hair had grown a trifle long, it is true, but that rather became him, and happily he had not finally abandoned the razor. His boots were indifferently blacked by the woman who came each day to straighten things, so he took a turn with the brushes himself.

“After all,” he reflected, “it is a ceremony. I lack the courage of the natural man. But I would not have her accuse me of boorishness.”

And again: “So this is the Lady of Knightswell? The water of the well is enchanted, Percy told me. Have I already drunk the one cup which is allowed?”

He reached the house-door just before the hour appointed for luncheon. With heartbeats sensibly quickened he followed the servant who led him to the drawing-room. Mrs. Clarendon and Ada were sitting here together. Isabel presented him to Miss Warren, then took the volume from his hands and looked into it.

“You know Sir Thomas Browne, no doubt, Ada,” she said.

“I know the ‘Urn-burial,’ ” Ada replied, calmly examining the visitor.

“Ah me, you put me to shame! There’s the kind of thing that I read,” she continued, pointing to a “Society” journal which lay on the table. “By-the-bye, what was it that Mr. Asquith said in defence of such literature? I really mustn’t forget that word. Oh, yes, he said it was concrete, that it dealt with the concrete. Mr. Kingcote looks contemptuous.”

“On the whole I think it’s rather more entertaining than Sir Thomas Browne,” remarked Ada. “At all events, it’s modern.”

“Another argument!” exclaimed Isabel. “You an ally, Ada! But don’t defend me at the expense of Mr. Kingcote’s respect.”

“Mr. Kingcote would probably respect me just as much, or as little, for the one taste as for the other.”

“Miss Warren would imply,” said Kingcote in a rather measured way, due to his habits of solitude, “that after all sincerity is the chief thing.”

“And a genuine delight in the Newgate Calendar,” added the girl, “vastly preferable to an affected reverence for Shakespeare.”

Kingcote looked at her sharply. One had clearly to take this young lady into account.

“You sketch from nature, I believe, Miss Warren?” he asked, to get the relief of a new subject.

“To please myself, yes.”

“And to please a good many other people as well,” said Mrs. Clarendon. “Ada’s drawings are remarkably good.”

“I should so much like to see your drawing of the cottage at Wood End,” said Kingcote.

“When was that made?” Isabel inquired, with a look of surprise.

Luncheon was announced. As they went to the dining-room, Kingcote explained that he had passed Miss Warren when she was engaged on the sketch, before ever he had thought of living in the cottage.

“Was it that which gave you the idea?” Isabel asked.

“Perhaps it kept the spot in my mind. I was on a walking tour at the time.”

“Not thinking of such a step?”

“No; the idea came subsequently.”

During the meal, conversation occupied itself with subjects such as the picturesque spots to be found about Winstoke, the interesting houses in that part of the county, Mr. Vissian and his bibliomania, the precocity of Percy Vissian. Ada contented herself with a two-edged utterance now and then, not given however in a disagreeable way; on the whole she seemed to like their guest’s talk. Kingcote several times found her open gaze turned upon himself, and was reminded of the evening when she parted from Mr. Vissian at the gates of Knightswell.

The drawing-room had French windows, opening upon the lawn. When they had repaired thither after lunch, Ada, after sitting in silence for a few moments, rose and went out into the open air. Mrs. Clarendon followed her with her eyes, and seemed about to speak, but in the end let her pass unaddressed.

Kingcote was examining the caryatides on either side of the fireplace. He turned, saw that his hostess was alone, and came to a seat near her.

“Are you not very lonely in your cottage?” Isabel asked.

“Sometimes, yes. But then I went there for the sake of loneliness.”

“It isn’t rude to ask you? You are doing literary work, no doubt?”

“No; I am doing no work at all.”

“But however do you spend your time in that dreadful place?”

“Dreadful? Does it show to you in that light?”

“Picturesque, I admit; but——”

She paused, with her head just on one side. “I can well understand the horror with which you regard such a mode of life,” said Kingcote, laughing. “But I have never had the habit of luxury, and, so long as I am free, nothing else matters much.”

“Free from what?”

“From sights and sounds which disgust me, from the contiguity of mean and hateful people, from suggestions which make life hideous; free to live with my fancies, and in the thoughts of men I love.”

Isabel regarded him with a half-puzzled smile, and reflected before she spoke again.

“What and where are all these things which revolt you?” she asked.

“Wherever men are gathered together; wherever there is what is called Society, and, along with it, what is called a social question.”

“But you are not a misanthropist?” Kingcote was half amused to perceive the difficulty she had in understanding him. Suggestions of this kind were evidently quite new to her; probably she did not even know what he meant by the phrase “social question.”

“I am not, I believe, a misanthropist, as you understand the word. But I had rather live alone than mix with men in general.”

“To me it would be dreadful,” said Isabel, after a moment’s thought. “I cannot bear solitude.”

“The society of refined and cultured people is the habit of your life.”

“Refined—in a sense. Cultured?—I am not so sure of that. You would not call them cultured, the people I live amongst. I am not a clever woman, Mr. Kingcote. My set is not literary nor artistic, nor anything of that kind. I am disposed to think we should come into the category of ‘mean and hateful people’—though of course you wouldn’t like to tell me so.”

“I was thinking of quite other phases of life. My own experience has not been, on the whole, among people who belong to what is called society. I have lived—in a haphazard way—with the classes that have no social standing, so, you see, I have no right to comment upon your circles.”

Isabel glanced at him, and turned her eyes away. A fan was lying on the table close by her; she reached it, and played with the folds.

“But at all events,” she resumed, as if to slightly change the tone, “you have had the Vissians. Don’t you find them delightful? I do so like Mr. Vissian, with his queer bookhunting, and Mrs. Vissian is charm itself. These are congenial associates, no doubt?”

“Very; I like them extremely. Has Mr. Vissian told you how my acquaintance with him began?”

“Nothing, except that you met somehow in connection with the cottage.”

“The good rector is wonderfully discreet,” said Kingcote, with a smile. And he related the story of the Midsummer Day on which he walked from Salcot to Winstoke.

“It really was an act of unexampled generosity on Mr. Vissians part, to trust a stranger, with so dubious a story. But the first edition of ‘Venice Preserved’ no doubt seemed to him a guarantee of respectability. I had the book bound during the few days that I spent in London, and made him a present of it when I returned.”

“You have friends in London?” Isabel asked. “Relations?”

“A sister—married. My parents are not living.”

“But of friends, companions?”

“One, an artist. Did you visit the Academy this year? There was a picture of his—his name is Gabriel—a London street scene; perhaps you didn’t notice it. You would scarcely have liked it. The hanging committee must have accepted it in a moment of strangely lucid liberality. By which, Mrs. Clarendon, I don’t mean to reflect upon your taste. I don’t like the picture myself, but it has great technical merits.”

“Is he young, like yourself?”

“Like myself?” Kingcote repeated, as if struck by the expression.

“Certainly. Are you not young?”

“I suppose so,” said the other, smiling rather grimly. “At all events, I am not thirty in years. But it sounded curious to hear the word applied to myself.”

Isabel laughed, opening and closing the fan. “But Gabriel is a fine fellow,” Kingcote exclaimed. “I wish I possessed a tenth part of his energy. There he works, day after day and week after week, no break, no failing of force or purpose, no holiday even—says he hasn’t time to take one. He will make his way, of course; such a man is bound to. Resolutely he has put away from himself every temptation to idleness. He sees no friends, he cares for no amusement. His power of working is glorious.”

“He is not, of course, married?”

Kingcote shook his head.

“That singleness of purpose—how splendid it is! He and I are opposite poles. I do not know what it is to have the same mind for two days together. My enthusiasm of to-day will be my disgust of to-morrow. I am always seeking, and never finding; I haven’t the force to pursue a search to the end. My moods are tyrannous; my moods make my whole life. Others have intellect; I have only temperament.”

There was no excitement in his way of uttering these confessions, but he began reflectively and ended in a grave bitterness.

“I think I know something of that,” Isabel said in return. “I, too, am much subject to moods.”

“But they do not affect the even tenor of your life,” said Kingcote. “They do not drive you to take one day an irrevocable step which you will repent the next. They have not made your life a failure.”

“Have they done so in your case?” Isabel asked, with a look of serious sympathy. “Pray remember your admission that you have not yet thirty years.”

“The tale of my years is of small account. I shall not change. I know myself, and I know my future.”

“That you cannot. And, from what you have told me, I think your present mode of life most unfortunate, most ill-chosen.”

There was a shadow at the window, and Ada re-entered the room.

“Won’t you let us see the sketch that was spoken of?” asked Mrs. Clarendon, turning to her.

“I don’t know where to find it at present,” Ada replied, moving to a seat in a remote part of the room.

“Do you think of living in that cottage through the winter?” Isabel asked of Kingcote, when there had been silence for a moment.

“Probably through many winters.”

“You remember that there is a considerable difference between our climate at present and what it will be in a couple of months or less.”

“I shall lay in a stock of fuel. And it will interest me. I have never spent a winter in the country; I want to study the effects.”

“The effects, I fear,” said Isabel, smiling, “are more likely to be of interest to our good friend Doctor Grayling.”

“Or even to the respectable undertaker, whose shop is in the High Street?” added Kingcote, with a laugh. “It doesn’t greatly matter.”

He rose and walked to the window.

“Do you remain here through the winter?” he asked.

“I believe so; though I cannot say with certainty. I like to be here for the meets.”

“The meets?”

“The hunting, you know.”

“Ah, you hunt?”

“Mr. Kingcote is shocked, Ada. He thinks that at my age I should have abandoned all such vanities.”

“Or perhaps wonders more,” remarked the girl, “that you ever indulged in them.”

Kingcote looked from one to the other, but kept silence.

“Oh, but we have altogether forgotten Sir Thomas!” Isabel exclaimed. “Where is he? Do read us something, Mr. Kingcote.”

Kingcote hesitated.

“There are many passages marked in the book,” he said. “Will you let me leave it with you, that you may glance through it? Perhaps it is better suited for reading to oneself.”

“Very well; but I will do more than glance. I once knew what it was even to study, Mr. Kingcote, though you will have a difficulty in believing it.”

“The idea is not so incongruous,” he said, half seriously.

“Though passably so. You are not going?”

“I will, if you please.”

A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon him during the last few minutes; a smile was summoned only with difficulty, and his eyes had a weary look.

“But now that we know each other by more than hearsay,” said Isabel, “you will come and see us again?”

“Yourself and Miss Warren, gladly; but if I am remiss in visiting you will not misunderstand the reason that keeps me away?”

“It shall be as you wish. Ada and I will let you know when we are alone.”

Kingcote made his way back to Wood End.