A light shone in his clear blue eyes,—­a flashing spark of battle.  Leveson stayed his bicycle a moment, wobbling on it uneasily.

“Lumpton goes back a good way,” he said airily; “I shall take him up when I have gone through the history of the Vancourts.  I’m on that scent now.  I shall make a good bit of business directly Miss Vancourt returns; she’ll pay for anything that will help her to stiffen her back and put more side on.”

“Really!” ejaculated Walden, coldly.  “I should have thought her forebears would have saved her from snobbery.”

“Not a bit of it!” declared Leveson, beginning to start the muscles of his grand-pianoforte legs with energy; “Rapid as a firework, and vain as a peacock!  Ta!”

And fixing a small cap firmly on the back of his very large head, he worked his wheel with treadmill regularity and was soon out of sight.

Walden stood alone in the churchyard, lost for a brief space in meditation.  The solemn strains of the organ which the schoolmistress was still playing, floated softly out from the church to the perfumed air, and the grave melodious murmur made an undercurrent of harmony to the clear bright warbling of a skylark, which, beating its wings against the sunbeams, rose ever higher and higher above him.

“What petty souls we are!” he murmured; “Here am I feeling actually indignant because this fellow Leveson, who has less education and knowledge than my dog Nebbie, assumes to have some acquaintance with Miss Vancourt!  What does it matter?  What business is it of mine?  If she cares to accept information from an ignoramus, what is it to do with me?  Nothing!  Yet,—­what a blatant ass the fellow is!  Upon my word, it does me good to say it—­a blatant ass!  And Sir Morton Pippitt is another!”

He laughed, and lifting his hat from his forehead, let the soft wind breathe refreshing coolness on his uncovered hair.

“There are decided limits to Christian love!” he said, the laughter still dancing in his eyes.  “I defy—­I positively defy anyone to love Leveson!  ‘The columns and capitals are all wrong’ are they?” And he gave a glance back at the beautiful little church in its exquisite design and completed perfection."’Out of keeping with early Norman walls!’ Wise Leveson!  He ignores all periods of transition as if they had never existed—­as if they had no meaning for the thinker as well as the architect—­as if the movement upward from the Norman, to the Early Pointed style showed no indication of progress!  And whereas a church should always be a veritable ‘sermon in stone’ expressive of the various generations that have wrought their best on it, he limits himself to the beginning of things!  I wonder what Leveson was in the beginning of things?  Possibly an embryo Megatherium!”