that bore the appearance of a knot to be unravelled had for him an immense attraction.  In mere mental calculation his power was amazing.  He took Wilfrid over his manufactory one day, and explained to him certain complicated pieces of machinery; the description was not so lucid as it might have been, owing to lack of words, but it manifested the completest understanding of things which to his companion were as hard as the riddle of the universe.  His modesty, withal, was excessive; to Wilfrid’s humane culture he deferred at all times; for all the learning which lay outside his own sphere he had boundless reverence.  Wilfrid’s gain by him was not only of a pleasant personal acquaintance; the intercourse extended his views, and in particular gave direction to much that had hitherto been vague potentiality in his character.  In more than one sense this visit to Dunfield was to prove a turning point in his life.

Beatrice, in the meantime, held herself apart; Wilfrid had never before felt himself so little at ease in her presence.  It was as though the short time which had elapsed since their last meeting had effected a permanent change in their mutual relations.  Previously their intercourse had gone as far in familiarity as was possible if it were not to take quite a new colour; now all at once this past seemed to go for nothing.  Beatrice was the active source of change.  She was deliberately—­he could not doubt it—­extending the distance between them, annulling bygone intimacy, shifting into ineffective remoteness all manner of common associations.  Things she would formerly have understood at a half-word she now affected to need to have explained to her.  He was ‘Mr. Athel’ to an extent he had never been before; and even of his relatives she spoke with a diminished familiarity.  She emphasised at every moment the characteristics which were alien to his sympathies, talked of the ‘revival’ ad nauseam, or changed with alarming suddenness from that to topics of excessive frivolousness.  Wilfrid little by little ceased to converse with her, in the real sense of the word; he even felt uncomfortable in her presence.  And Mrs. Baxendale had clear eyes for at all events the outward features of the situation.

On the fifth day of Wilfrid’s presence in the house, Beatrice took the opportunity of being alone with her aunt to observe that she must go southwards by a certain train next morning.

‘Oh, surely not!’ protested Mrs. Baxendale.  ’I can’t spare you yet.  And your mother is still in Berkshire.’

‘Yes, but that makes no difference to me, you know,’ said Beatrice.  ’I’m often at home by myself.  Indeed I must go to-morrow.’

’Won’t you stay if I beg you?  It’s four years since you were here, and who knows how long it will be before I entrap you again.  You’ve already threatened me, you know, with the peerage, and I’m very sure you won’t deign to honour me when that day comes.  Now, there’s a good girl—­to the end of the week at least.’