“But isn’t it unfortunately true that Christianity spoke also of rewards?”

“Yes, it is true.  The promise was sometimes adapted to the poorer understanding.  More often, it was nobler, and by that I take my stand.  ’Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’  The words, you know, had then a meaning.  Now they have none.  To see God was not a little thing, I imagine, but the vision, probably, brought with it neither purple nor fine linen.—­For curiosity’s sake, Dyce, read Matthew v. to vii. before you go to sleep.  You’ll find the old Bible in your bedroom.”

The door was thrown open, and Mrs. Lashmar’s voice broke upon the still air of the study.

“Dyce, have you seen to-day’s Times?  There’s a most interesting article on the probable duration of Parliament.  Take it up to your room with you, and read it before you sleep.”

CHAPTER XIX

“There’s a letter for you, Dyce; forwarded from Rivenoak, I see.”

It lay beside his plate on the breakfast table, and Dyce eyed it with curiosity.  The backward-sloping hand was quite unknown to him.  He tapped at an egg, and still scrutinised the writing on the envelope; it was Constance who had crossed out the Rivenoak address, and had written beside it “The Vicarage, Alverholme.”

“Have you slept well?” asked his mother, who treated him with much more consideration than at his last visit.

“Very well indeed,” he replied mechanically, taking up his letter and cutting it open with a table-knife.

“HAVE MORE COURAGE.  AIM HIGHER.  IT IS NOT TOO LATE.”

Dyce stared at the oracular message, written in capitals on a sheet of paper which contained nothing else.  He again examined the envelope, but the post-mark in no way helped him.  He glanced at his mother, and, finding her eye upon him, folded the sheet carelessly.  He glanced at his father, who had just laid down a letter which evidently worried him.  The meal passed with very little conversation.  Dyce puzzled over the anonymous counsel so mysteriously conveyed to him, and presently went apart to muse unobserved.

He thought of Iris Woolstan.  Of course a woman had done this thing, and Iris he could well believe capable of it.  But what did she mean?  Did she really imagine that, but for lack of courage, he would have made suit to her?  Did she really regard herself as socially his superior?  There was no telling.  Women had the oddest notions on such subjects, and perhaps the fact of his engaging himself to Constance Bride, a mere secretary, struck her as deplorable.  “Aim higher.”  The exhortation was amusing enough.  One would have supposed it came at least from some great heiress—­

He stopped in his pacing about the garden.  An heiress?—­May Tomalin?