“I shall go seek him.”

“Do; and give my best love to him, poor fellow.”

Cecily came alone.  She was closeted with Miriam for a long time, then saw Eleanor.  Spence purposely kept away from home.

Dante lay unread, as well as the other books which Eleanor placed insidiously in her cousin’s room.  Letters lay unanswered—­among them several relating to the proposed new chapel at Bartles.  How did Miriam employ herself during the hours that she spent alone?

Not seldom, in looking back upon her childhood and maidenhood.

Imagine a very ugly cubical brick house of two stories, in a suburb of Manchester.  It stands a few yards back from the road.  On one side, it is parted by a row of poplars from several mean cottages; on the other, by a narrow field from a house somewhat larger and possibly a little uglier than itself.  Its outlook, over the highway, is on to a tract of country just being broken up by builders, beyond which a conglomerate of factories, with chimneys ever belching heavy fumes, closes the view; its rear windows regard a scrubby meadow, grazed generally by broken-down horses, with again a limitary prospect of vast mills.

Imagine a Sunday in this house.  Half an hour later than on profane days, Mrs. Elgar descends the stairs.  She is a lady of middle age, slight, not ungraceful, handsome; the look of pain about her forehead is partly habitual, but the consciousness of Sunday intensifies it.  She moves without a sound.  Entering the breakfast-room, she finds there two children, a girl and a boy, both attired in new-seeming garments which are obviously stiff and uncomfortable.  The little girl sits on an uneasy chair, her white-stockinged legs dangling, on her lap a large copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress;” the boy is half reclined on a shiny sofa, his hands in his pockets, on his face an expression of discontent.  The table is very white, very cold, very uninviting.

Ten minutes later appears the master of the house, shaven, also in garments that appear now and uncomfortable, glancing hither and thither with preoccupied eyes.  There is some talk in a low voice between the little girl and her mother; then the family seat themselves at table silently.  Mr. Elgar turns a displeased look on the boy, and says something in a harsh voice which causes the youngster to straighten himself, curl his lip precociously, and thereafter preserve a countenance of rebellion subdued by fear.  His father eats very little, speaks scarcely at all, but thinks, thinks-and most assuredly not of sacred subjects.

Breakfast over, there follows an hour of indescribable dreariness, until the neighbourhood begins to sound with the clanging of religious bells.  Mr. Elgar has withdrawn to a little room of his own, where perhaps, he gives himself up to meditation on the duties of a Christian parent, though his incredulous son has ere now had a glimpse at the door, and observed him in the attitude of letter-writing.  Mrs. Elgar