Three weeks had passed since the day when Captain Forrester drove us out from town. Winter was slowly into spring. The winds were still cold and piercing, and the bright sun and keen air sadly to sensitive folk, but the snow had all melted and the grass sprung green upon the , throwing the blue of the sea beyond into sharp contrast; the cattle came out once more to feed; yellow-hammers and butcher-birds began to appear on the meadows; and over earth and sea, soft gray clouds broke into strange shapes upon the blue.  
I remember all this now; then I was only conscious of one thing—that, in spite of the east wind, I was happy.
 
Father was well again; he rode over the farm on his cob just as he used to do, and mother had forgotten the very name of a poultice. Joyce and the captain showed every sign of playing in the romance that I had planned for them; no one had mentioned the subject of a bailiff for Knellestone from that day to this; and the 's ball was close at hand.
 
How was it possible that I should be otherwise than happy?
 
It was the very night before the dance. Jessie Hoad, who had consented to sing for our village concert, had been over and we had been having a practice under Captain Forrester's directions. She was a fashionably dressed, fashionably mannered, fashionably minded young woman, and quite content with herself; she generally resented directions, but she had submitted with a pretty good grace to his.
 
Miss Thorne had also been in. Joyce in this had shown one of those strange instances of that were in her. Mary Thorne had asked to come, and she should not be refused. I remember noticing that Captain Forrester and that particularly gay-tempered young lady seemed to be very intimate together; just, in fact, as people who had known one another from childhood would be. They took the liberty of telling one another home-truths—at least Mary Thorne did (I fancied Frank responded less promptly), and did it in a blunt fashion that was to her. But I liked blunt people. I liked Mary Thorne very much.
 
Although she was an heiress to money that had been "sucked from the blood of the people"—to money made from a factory where girls and little children worked long hours out of the sunlight and the fresh air—although she lived in a great house that overlooked acres of land that belonged to her—and although my father could scarcely be got to speak to hers—I liked Mary Thorne. She was so frank and jolly, and took it so as a matter-of-course that we were to be friends, that I always forgot that she rode in a carriage when I walked, and that she and I ought, by rights, not to be so much at ease.
 
That day she was particularly jolly, and she and I and Captain Forrester laughed together till I was quite ashamed to see that I had left Joyce all the entertaining of Miss Hoad to do in the mean time. For the captain had not paid so much attention to Joyce on that day as on most others; I suppose he thought it was more not to do so before strangers.
 
Both our lady visitors had left, however, by half-past five o'clock, and Captain Forrester stood on the garden terrace now with Joyce alone, while I had returned to the darning of the family socks. It was close upon sunset, and they were looking at the lilacs that were beginning to in the bud. Joyce wore a lilac gown herself, I remember. The captain had once admired it, and I had noticed that she had put it on very often since then.
 
I watched them from the window where I sat with my work. For the first time I was half frightened at what I had done. I wondered what this romance was like that I had woven for Joyce. I felt that she was gliding away out of my , into an unknown world where I had driven her, and where I could not now follow her. Was it all happiness in that world?
 
Although the light was fading, and I wanted it all for my work, I moved away from the window-seat farther into the room. It seemed indelicate to watch them; although, indeed, they were only there side by side quietly, and what they were saying to one another I could not have heard if I had wished to do so. But it was my doing that they were alone at all. Joyce had stockings to darn too, but I had suggested that the parlor posy wanted freshening, and that there were some out on the cliff.
 
Mother was out; she had gone to assist at the arrival of a new member of the population, and such an event always interested her so profoundly that she forgot other things for the moment. Such an opportunity might not occur again for a long time, and I was not going to miss it—otherwise those two had not been alone together before. At least not to my knowledge.
 
Once Joyce had gone out into the village by herself, and when she had come home she had run straight up into her room instead of coming into the parlor. I had gone up to her after a little while, as she did not come down, and had found her sitting by the window with her things still on, looking out to the sea with a half-troubled expression on her face. I had asked her what was the matter, and she had smiled and said, "Nothing at all," and I had believed her.
 
However, even in the most open way in the world, Captain Forrester had managed to get pretty well acquainted with Joyce by this time, for he had come to the Grange almost every day since the squire had brought him to pay that first call. He came on the plea of interest in father's views; and though mother, I could see, had taken a dislike to him, simply because he was a rival to the squire, and took every opportunity of saying things about him to us girls when he was not present, even she felt the influence of the friendly manner that insisted on everything being pleasant and friendly in return, and did not seem somehow to be able to deny him the freedom which he claimed so naturally, of coming to the house whenever the fancy seized him. Certainly it would have been very difficult to turn Captain Forrester out.
 
Although it was evident enough to every one but father, in his dreamy self-absorption, that the young man came to see my beautiful sister, and was quickly falling hopelessly in love with her, still he was far too to neglect others for her—he was always doing something for mother, her something that she wanted, or in some way her; and as for me, he not only took all the burden of the village concert off my shoulders, the musical part of which always fell to my lot, but he also taught me how to sing my songs as I had no idea of how to sing them before, and took so much interest in my voice and in my performance that he really made me quite ambitious for the time as to what I might possibly do. And however much mother might have wished to turn the captain out, there were difficulties attending this course of action.
 
In the first place, he was the squire's nephew, and she could not very well be rude to the squire's nephew, however much she may have fancied that the squire would, in his heart, it; and then father had taken such an unusually strong fancy to the young man, that it would have been more than mother had ever been known to do to it. This friendship between an old and a young man was really a thing.
 
Father was not at all given to marked preferences for people; he was a reserved man, and his own society was generally sufficient for him. Even in the class whose interests he had so dearly at heart—his own class he would have called it, although in force and culture he was very far above the typical representatives of it—he was a god to the many, rather than a friend to the individual. And apart from his friendship with the squire, which was a friendship rather of custom than of choice, I do not remember his having a single intimate acquaintance. For I do not choose to consider that Hoad ever really was a friend in any sense of the word.
 
I have always fancied that father's capacity for friendship was swallowed up in that one romantic episode of his youth, that stood side by side with his love for our mother, and was not less beautiful though so different.
 
At first I think Forrester's aristocratic appearance, his knowledge of hunting and horse-flesh, and music and dancing, and all the pleasures of the rich and idle, his polished manners, and even his good coat, rather stood in his light in the eyes of the "working-man;" but it was only at first. Forrester's genuine enthusiasm for the interests that he , and his admiring for the mind that had thought the problem out, were enough to win the friendship of any man; for I suppose even at father's age one is not to this refined sort of flattery.
 
Those were happy days in the dear old home, when we were all together, and none but the most trivial cloud of trouble or doubt had come to the harmony of our life.
 
I never remember father merrier than he was at that time. He and Frank would sit there smoking their pipes, and laughing and talking as it does one's heart good to remember. There was never any quarrelling over these discussions, as there used to be over the arguments with the squire. Not that the young man always agreed at once about things. He required to be convinced, but then he always was convinced in the end. And his wild schemes for the development of the people and the prevention of crime, and the of , all sounded so practical and pleasant, as set in his pleasant, brilliant language, full of fire and enthusiasm, and not at all like the same theories that father had been to quarrel over with the squire in his , serious fashion.
 
Everything that the captain proposed was to be won from the top, by discussions and meetings among the great of the land. He could shake hands on terms of equality with the poorest over his pot of beer, but it was not from the laborer that the reform would ever be obtained; and he quite refused to see the matter in the sombre light in which father held it, who believed in no reform—if reform there could be—that did not come from the class that needed it, and that should come without bitter struggles and patient, dogged . And in the end he convinced—or seemed to convince—Frank that this was so.
 
I noticed how, imperceptibly, under the influence of father's earnest, powerful nature, the young man slowly became more earnest and more serious too. He talked less and he listened more; and truly there was no lack of food.
 
The great subjects under discussion were the nationalization of land and the formation of trade corporations for the protection of the artisan class. These corporations were to be formed as far as possible on the model of the old of the Middle Ages; they were to have funds for widows, , and disabled workmen; they were to prevent on Sundays, and the employment of children and married women in factories; they were to determine the hours of labor and the rate of wages, and to inquire into the condition of workplaces.
 
There were many other principles belonging to them besides these that I have quoted, but I cannot remember any more, though I remember clearly how father and Frank disagreed upon the question of whether the corporations were to enjoy a monopoly or not. I suppose they agreed finally upon the point, for I know that Frank undertook to air the matter at public meetings in London, and seemed to be quite sure that he would be able to start a trial society before long. I how absolutely he refused to be damped by father's less mood; and best of all, I remember the smile that he brought to father's face, and the light that he called back to his eye.
 
There was only one : the squire did not come to see us. No doubt I should not have allowed at this time that it was any blot, and when mother remarked upon it, I held my tongue; but I know very well that I was sorry the squire kept away.
 
On this evening of which I am thinking, however, the squire did not keep away. I am afraid I ha............