“Oh, my dear,” she returned, “as to the milk—­the young man looked quite clean, I assure you; and then such a large country as the cows have to roam in!”

Having delivered herself of this energetic whisper, she subsided below the level of the seat back, leaving Sophia to sit and wonder in a drowsy muse whether the mother supposed that the value of a cow’s milk would be increased if, like Io, she could prance across a continent.

Sophia Rexford sat upright, with the large baby in her arms and a bigger child leaning on her shoulder.  Both children were more or less restless; but their sister was not restless, she sat quite still.  The attitude of her tall figure had the composure and strength in it which do not belong to first youth.  Hers was a fine face; it might even be called beautiful; but no one now would call it pretty—­the skin was too colourless, the expression too earnest.

Her eyes took on the look that tells of inward, rather than outward, vision.  Her thoughts were such as she would not have told to any one, but not because of evil in them.

This was the lady to whom Robert Trenholme, the master of the college at Chellaston, had written his letter; and she was thinking of that letter now, and of him, pondering much that, by some phantasy of dreams, she should have been suddenly reminded of him by the voice of the man who had passed through the car with the milk.

Her mind flitted lightly to the past; to a season she had once spent in a fashionable part of London, and to her acquaintance with the young curate, who was receiving some patronage from the family with whom she was visiting.  She had been a beauty then; every one danced to the tune she piped, and this curate—­a mere fledgeling—­had danced also.  That was nothing.  No, it was nothing that he had, for a time, followed lovesick in her train—­she never doubted that he had had that sickness, although he had not spoken of it—­all that had been notable in the acquaintance was that she, who at that time had played with the higher aims and impulses of life, had thought, in her youthful arrogance, that she discerned in this man something higher and finer than she saw in other men.  She had been pleased to make something of a friend of him, condescending to advise and encourage him, pronouncing upon his desire to seek a wider field in a new country, and calling it good.  Later, when he was gone, and life for her had grown more quiet for lack of circumstances to feed excitement, she had wondered sometimes if this man had recovered as perfectly from that love-sickness as others had done.  That was all—­absolutely all.  Her life had lately come again into indirect relations with him through circumstances over which neither he nor she had had any control; and now, when she was about to see him, he had taken upon him to write and pick up the thread of personal friendship again and remind her of the past.