In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the neighbourhood of the cottage.  But one afternoon at the very end of October, she overtook—­walking—­a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck road, and recognized Susy Penfold.  A constrained greeting passed between them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away—­had been away, indeed, since the day following her last interview with Harry.  The very next morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave illness of Mrs. Penfold’s elder sister.  And there they were still; though Lydia was expected home shortly.

Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why.  At any rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.

By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so fastidious and—­to all appearances—­so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold?  To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham!  Victoria acknowledged indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man.  She could not forget the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose’s library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small, peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes.  All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she thought, of a common stamp.

At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.

Boden was the confessor of a good many people.  Not that he was by any means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with any accepted form of doctrine.  But there was in him the natural priestly power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss.  It was because men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing, questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.

Victoria was truly attached to him.  He had been with her during the days of her husband’s sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard to the passing difficulties of Tatham’s school and college days and pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own.  Duddon was as much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world.  When he had worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little