“Yes, I was astonished to see him looking so well.  He would scarcely give a stranger the impression of being delicate.”

“They told me last summer in London that the damage to the lungs had been quite outgrown, and that he would only need moderate care for the future.  Indeed, we should have stayed at home this year, but last summer twelvemonth there was a fever, and that set on foot a perquisition into our drains at Belforest, and it was satisfactorily proved that we ought by good rights to have been all dead of typhoid long ago.  So we turned the workmen in, and they could not of course be got out again.  And then Allen fell in love with parquet and tiles, and I was weak enough to think it a good opportunity when all the floors were up.  But when a man of taste takes to originality, there’s no end of it.  Everything has had to be made on purpose, and certain little tiles five times over; for when they did come out the right shape, they were of a colour that Allen pronounced utter demoralisation.  However, we are quite determined to get home this summer, and you and Mary must meet there, and show old Kenminster to Mr. Morgan.  Ah! here she comes, and I shall leave you to enjoy this lucid interval of her while Mr. Morgan is doing his last lessons with the children.”

“How exactly like herself!” exclaimed Mr. Ogilvie, as Mrs. Brownlow vanished under one of the arches.

“Like! yes; but much more, much better,” said Mary, eagerly.

“Ah, do you remember when you told me coming to her was an experiment, and you thought it might be better for the old friendship if you did not accept the situation?”

“You triumph at last, David; but I can confess now that for the first four years I held to that opinion, and felt that my poor Carey and I could have loved each other better if our relative situations had been different, and we had not seen so much of one another.  My life used to seem to me half-unspoken remonstrance, half-truckling compliance, and nothing but our mutual loyalty to old times, and dear little Babie’s affection, could have borne us through.”

“And her extraordinary sweetness and humility, Mary.”

“Yes, I allow that.  Very few employers would have treated me as she did, knowing how I regretted much that went on in her household.  However, when I met her at Pontresina, after the boys’ terrible adventure in Switzerland, there was an indefinable change.  I cannot tell whether it is owing to the constant being with such a boy as Armine, while he was for more than a year between life and death, or whether it was from the influence of living with Mrs. Evelyn; but she has certainly ever since had the one thing that was wanting to all her sweetness and charm.”

“I never thought so!”

“No; but you were never a fair judge.  I think she has owed unspeakably much to Mrs. Evelyn, who, so far as I can see, is the first person who, at any rate since the break-up of the original home, made conscientiousness, or indeed religion, appear winning to her, neither stiff, nor censorious, nor goody.”