The races were exceptionally brilliant, and fully attended, but the triumph of the roughs had made them more outrageously disgraceful in their conduct than ever; and when Miles went to the quarter-sessions, rather doubting whether he should not find himself landed in Coventry, not only did the calendar of offences speak for itself, but sundry country gentlemen shook him by the hand, lamenting that railways and rowdyism had entirely altered races from what they used to be, that he was in the right, and what they had seen so recently proved that the only thing to be done was to withdraw from what respectable people could no longer keep within bounds.  Such withdrawal will not prevent them, but it will hinder the demoralization from being so extensive as formerly, since no one of much character to lose will attend them.

Mr. Bowater rejoiced in Miles’s triumph.  None of that family had been at these same races.  They had all been much too anxious about Herbert not to view Ember Week in a very different light from that in which they had thought of it before.

Lent had brought the junior curate back from Strawyers, not much more than a convalescent, but with his sister to look after him, and both Rector and senior anxious to spare him; he had gone on well till the family returned and resumed Jenny, when he was left to his own devices, namely, ‘all work and no play.’  He was as fixed as ever in his resolution of making this a penance year, and believed himself so entirety recovered as to be able to do without relaxations.  Cricket, riding, dinners, and garden-parties alike he had given up, and divided his time entirely between church and parish work and study.  Hard reading had never been congenial, and took a great deal out of him, and in fact, all his theological study had hitherto been little more than task-work, into which he had never fully entered, whereas these subjects had now assumed such a force, depth, and importance, that he did in truth feel constrained to go to the very foundation, and work through everything again, moved and affected by them in every fibre of his soul, which vibrated now at what it had merely acquiesced in before.  It was a phase that had come suddenly on him, when his mind was in full vigour of development, and his frame and nerves below par, and the effect could not but be severe.  He was wrapped up in these great realities, and seemed to care for no talk, except discussing them with Julius or the senior curate, and often treated things of common life like the dream that they really are.

Julius laid as little parish work on him as possible, only, indeed, what seemed actually beneficial by taking him out; but it may be feared, that in his present fervid state he was not nearly so winning to his young clients as when he was less ’terribly in earnest,’ although the old women were perhaps more devoted to him, from the tender conviction ’that the poor dear young gentleman would not be here long.’