“I go to town every morning to teach singing; I have singing-classes.”

“So you are a singing-mistress now.  Well, everything comes round at last.  Your mother—­”

“Yes, everything comes round again,” she said, sighing; “and the neighbourhood isn’t inconvenient.  There is a good train in the morning and a good train in the evening; the one you came by is a wretched one, but if you had come by the later train you would have seen less of me.  You’re not sorry?”

“My dear Evelyn, don’t be affected.  I’m trying to take it all in.  You have retreated from the convent, and are now a singing-mistress.  Have you lost your voice?”

“I’m afraid a good deal of it.”  And, pointing with her parasol, she said, “There is the inn; I will tell them to fetch your bag.”

As she went towards the “Stag and Hounds” he congratulated himself that the earlier woman still subsisted in the later, there could be no doubt of that, and in sufficient proportion for her to create a new life, and out of nothing but her own wits, for if she had escaped from the convent with her intelligence, or part of it, she hadn’t escaped with her money; the nuns had got her money safe enough.  She would be loth to admit it, but it could not be otherwise.  So out of her own wits she had negotiated the purchase of a large piece of ground (she had said a large piece), and built a cottage, and a very pretty cottage too, he was sure of that; and his face assumed a blank expression, for he was away with her in some past time, in the midst of an architectural discussion.  But returning gradually from this happy past, her intelligence seemed to him like some strong twine or wire!  “How clever of her to have discovered this country where land was cheap!” And he looked round, seeing its beauty because she lived in it.  Above all, to have found work to do, no easy matter when one has torn oneself and one’s past to shreds, as she had done.  No doubt she was making quite a nice little income by teaching; and, in increasing admiration, he walked round the dusty inn and the triangular piece of grass in front of it.  A game of bat-and-trap was in progress, and he conceived a love for that old English game, though till now he thought it stupid and vulgar.  The horse-pond appealed to him as a picturesque piece of water, and, standing back from it, he admired the rows of trees on the further bank—­pollards of some kind—­and, still more, the reflections of these trees in the dark green water; and his eyes followed the swallows, dipping and gliding through the moveless air.  A spire showed between the trees, a girl and some children were gathering wild flowers in the hedgerows.  How like England!  But here was Evelyn!

“Did you ever see a more beautiful evening?  And aren’t you glad that the evening in which I see you again is—­one would like to call it beatific, only I don’t like the word; it reminds me of the convent you have left.”

“One goes away in order that one may return home, Owen.”