“I propose to pay my respects in company with Christie to-morrow.  She is a grand old lady; and what cubs we were, Bessie, to throw her kindness in her face before!  How angry you were!”

“You were afraid that her patronage might be a trespass on your independence.  It was a mistake in the right direction, if it was a mistake at all.  Poor Mr. Logger is called a toady because he loves to visit at the comfortable houses of rich great widow ladies, but I am sure they love to have him.  Lady Latimer does not approve you any the less for not being eager to accept her invitations.  You know I was fond of her—­I looked up to her more than anybody.  I believe I do still.”

There was a brief pause, and then Harry said, “I have heard nothing of Abbotsmead yet, Bessie?”

“There is not much to hear.  I live there, but no longer in the character of heiress; that prospect is changed by the opportune discovery that my uncle Laurence had the wisdom, some five years ago, to take a wife to please himself, instead of a second fine lady to please my grandfather.  He made a secret of it, for which there was no necessity and not much excuse, but he did it for their happiness.  They have three capital little boys, who, of course, have taken my shoes.  I am not sorry.  I don’t care for Woldshire or Abbotsmead.  The Forest has my heart.”

“And mine.  A man may set his hopes high, so I go on aspiring to the possession of this earthly paradise of Brook.”

Bessie was smitten with a sudden recollection of what more Harry had aspired to that time she was admitted into his confidence respecting the old manor-house.  She colored consciously, for she knew that he also recollected, then said with a smile, “Ah, Harry, but between such aspirations and their achievement there stretches so often a weary long day.  You will tire with looking forward if you look so far.  Are you not tiring now?”

“No, no.  You must not take any notice of my mother’s solemn prognostics.  She does not admire what she calls the smoky color I bring home from London.  Some remote ancestor of my father died there of decline, and she has taken up a notion that I ought to throw the study of the law to the winds, come home, and turn farmer.  Of what avail, I ask her, would my scholarship be then?”

“You would enjoy it, Harry.  In combination with a country life it would make you the pleasantest life a man can live.”

Harry shook his head:  “What do you know about it, Bessie?  It is dreadfully hard on an ambitious fellow to be forced to turn his back on all his fine visions of usefulness and distinction for the paltry fear that death may cut him short.”

“Oh, if you regard it in that light!  I should not call it a paltry fear.  There are more ways than one to distinction—­this, for instance,” dropping her hand on Harry’s paper in the review.  “Winged words fly far, and influence you never know what minds.  I should be proud of the distinction of a public writer.”