“I’m very glad you like the idea,” said May, graciously.  Again—­ without looking at him—­she saw his lips shaping words which they could not sound; she saw his troubled, abashed smile, and his uneasy movement which ended in nothing at all.

“We have some fine trees at Rivenoak,” fell from her, as her eyes wandered.

“Indeed you have!”

“You like trees, don’t you?”

“Very much.  When I was a boy, I once saw a great many splendid oaks and beeches cut down, and it made me miserable.”

“Where was that?”

“On land that had belonged to my father, and, which, for a year or two, belonged to me.”

He spoke with an uneasy smile, again crushing a brown leaf between his fingers.  May’s silence compelled him to proceed.

“I have no trees now.”  He tried to laugh.  “Only a bit of a farm, which seems to be going out of cultivation.”

“But why do you let it do so?”

“It’s in the hands of a troublesome tenant.  If I had been wise, I should have learnt to farm it myself, years ago.  Perhaps I shall still do so.”

“That would be interesting,” said May.  “Tell me about it, will you?  It’s in Kent, I think?”

The impoverished peer spoke freely of the matter.  He had been seeking this opportunity since the beginning of their talk.  Yet, before he had ceased, moral discomfort took hold upon him, and his head drooped in shame.  The silence which followed—­May was saying to herself that now, now the moment had come did but increase his embarrassment.  He wished to speak of his sisters, to hint at their circumstances, but the thing was impossible.  In desperation, he broke into some wholly foreign subject, and for this morning, all hope of the decisive step had passed.

The day brought no other opportunity.  Towards midnight, Dymchurch sat at the open window of his chamber, glad to be alone, anxious, self-reproachful.  To-morrow he must discharge what had become an obvious duty, however difficult it might be.

He had received a long letter from the younger of his sisters.  It spoke of the other’s ill health, a subject of disquiet for the past month, and went on to discuss a topic which frequently arose in this correspondence the authority of the Church of Rome.  A lady who had just been passing a fortnight at the house in Somerset was a Catholic, and Dymchurch suspected her of proselytism; from the tone of the present letter it appeared that her arguments had had considerable success.  Though impartial in his judgment of the old faith, Dymchurch felt annoyed and depressed at the thought that one of his sisters, or both, might turn in that direction; he explained their religious unrest by the solitude and monotony of their lives, for which it seemed to him that he himself was largely to blame.  Were he to marry May Tomalin, everything would at once, he thought, be changed for the better; his sisters might come forth from their seclusion, mingle with wholesome society, and have done with more or less morbid speculation.