spots where the wood-sorrel made haste to flower, or where the white violet breathed its fragrance in security from common pilferers.  Here was the safest and pleasantest matter for conversation.  He knew that on such topics he could talk agreeably enough, revealing without stress or importunity his tastes, his powers, his attainments.  And it seemed to him that Sidwell listened with growing interest.  Most certainly her father encouraged his visits to the house, and Mrs. Warricombe behaved to him with increase of suavity.

In the meantime he had purchased a copy of Reusch’s Bibel und Natur, and had made a translation of some fifty pages.  This experiment he submitted to a London publishing house, with proposals for the completion of the work; without much delay there came a civil letter of excuse, and with it the sample returned.  Another attempt again met with rejection.  This failure did not trouble him.  What he really desired was to read through his version of Reusch with Martin Warricombe, and before long he had brought it to pass that Martin requested a perusal of the manuscript as it advanced, which it did but slowly.  Godwin durst not endanger his success in the examination by encroaching upon hours of necessary study; his leisure was largely sacrificed to~ Bibel und Natur~, and many an evening of calm golden loveliness, when he longed to be amid the fields, passed in vexatious imprisonment.  The name of Reusch grew odious to him, and he revenged himself for the hypocrisy of other hours by fierce scorn, cast audibly at this laborious exegetist.

CHAPTER III

It occasionally happens that a woman whose early life has been directed by native silliness and social bias, will submit to a tardy education at the hands of her own children.  Thus was it with Mrs Warricombe.

She came of a race long established in squirearchic dignity amid heaths and woodlands.  Her breeding was pure through many generations of the paternal and maternal lines, representative of a physical type, fortified in the males by much companionship with horse and hound, and by the corresponding country pursuits of dowered daughters.  At the time of her marriage she had no charms of person more remarkable than rosy comeliness and the symmetry of supple limb.  As for the nurture of her mind, it had been intrusted to home-governesses of respectable incapacity.  Martin Warricombe married her because she was one of a little circle of girls, much alike as to birth and fortune, with whom he had grown up in familiar communication.  Timidity imposed restraints upon him which made his choice almost a matter of accident.  As befalls often enough, the betrothal became an accomplished fact whilst he was still doubting whether he desired it or not.  When the fervour of early wedlock was outlived, he had no difficulty in accepting as a matter of course that his life’s companion should be hopelessly illogical and at heart indifferent to everything but the small graces and substantial comforts of provincial existence.  One of the advantages of wealth is that it allows husband and wife to keep a great deal apart without any show of mutual unkindness, a condition essential to happiness in marriage.  Time fostered in them a calm attachment, independent of spiritual sympathy, satisfied with a common regard for domestic honour.