And now let me pause a while and think. Ten years have passed since the time of which I write. I am a woman, twenty-nine years old—a woman in as well as in years, for many things have happened since then which have taught me more than the passage of time. And I can see clearly enough now that what I am going to tell happened through no fault of others; my pain and my disappointment were the result only of my own mistake; let me state that as a fact—it will be a satisfaction to my own conscience. I never had any excuse for that mistake. I was a foolish, , romantic girl, and out of the whirlwind of my own love I up the answering love that I ; but it was never there—it was a of my own making.  
A month had passed since Joyce had come home, since that night when Trayton Harrod and I stood under the abbey eaves in the lightning and the storm—a long, long summer's month. The hay had all been gathered in long ago, and the harvest was golden and ready for the reaping; the plain that had once been so green was growing every day; the thick, reedy grass that blooms with a rich dark upon our made planes of brown over the flatness of the pastures—the whole land was warm with color; the gray castle lay sleeping upon the flaxen turf, with the gray beach beyond; the white sheep cropped lazily what blades they could find; between the two lines of tall rushes yellow and white water-lilies floated upon the dikes, and meadowsweet bloomed upon their banks; the poppies had faded from the cornfields, and the little harvest-mouse built her nest upon the tall ears of wheat.
 
Every sign told that the summer would soon be fading into autumn; the young broods were all abroad long ago; the swallows and the martins were preparing for a second hatching; the humming of the snipe, as his mate sat on her nest, made a pleasant sound along the dikes near to the sea; the swift, first of all birds to leave us, would soon be taking her southward flight; on the beach the yellow sea-poppies bloomed amid their pale green leaves.
 
There had been the same little trouble over the bringing of reaping and threshing machines onto the farm as there had been over the . Poor father did not appear to be reconciled to these innovations, although he seemed to have made up his mind to give in to Trayton Harrod up to a certain point; he had not, however, wavered an inch on the subject of the length of the ' working-hours; on that he and the bailiff still preserved an ill-concealed attitude of .
 
I did what I could to preserve the peace, so did mother, so did we all; but I don't think that father grew to like Trayton Harrod any better as time went on. I think he respected him . More than once, I , he took occasion to observe that he was an upright and honorable man, and yet, somehow, he scarcely seemed even to thoroughly trust him.
 
I know, at least, that one morning about this time he called me into his study and bade me ride into town at once with a letter for Mr. Hoad, which I was to deliver into his own hands, letting nobody know my errand. Three months ago how proud I should have been of this trust, which might have been given to the man who had been called in to me! But now I did not like it; it filled me with , with , with anger at the slight to him.
 
"Are you afraid to go, Meg?" father had asked, seeing me hesitate. "I'll go myself."
 
The word must have lit up my gray eyes with the light that he was to laugh at, for he put down his stick and sank into his chair.
 
"There," said he, patting my cheek, "I thought she hadn't lost her pride."
 
And neither had I; but the strangeness of the request, and the strangeness of Mr. Hoad's face as he read the letter, set me thinking most uncomfortably all the way home. Nor was it only on that occasion that I had need to ponder somewhat anxiously on matters that were not my own.
 
A Sunday morning about this time comes back to my mind. Father had been up to London during the week on one or two matters of business. It was an event in those days for a farmer to go up to London. To father it was an event, for he always had been a more than usually stay-at-home man. But there must have been some special reason that took him up; he had seemed for some time.
 
I had fancied that it was on account of that scheme that Frank Forrester had not yet succeeded in floating, and I was angry with Frank for that cooling down which I have noticed as happening in him whenever he got away from the influence. I was angry with Joyce for not keeping him up to his first , angry with mother for not allowing them to correspond, so that she might do so. But after all, I don't believe that father's uneasiness was owing to Frank Forrester, for his journey to London was suddenly upon one afternoon after he and Mr. Hoad had had a long talk together in the business-room. Father had seen Harrod afterwards, and had then announced his proposed journey at the tea-table.
 
He had been away only two days; but although he said that he had been made a great deal of by the old friend with whom he had stayed, and though he declared that Frank was just the same as ever, and it was therefore to be supposed that they had been as good comrades as usual, father looked none the better for his little change. As we all stood up in the old church to say the , I remember noticing how ill he looked.
 
It was not only that he his tall, massive figure over the desk, leaning heavily upon it with both hands, as if for needful support; it was not even that his cheeks were more sunken, and that he bowed his head wearily; it was that in his dull eyes and set lips there was an air of suffering, of dejection and hopelessness, that was pathetic even to me who should have known nothing of at nineteen. It struck me with sad forebodings, and those words of the 's a few weeks before came back to my mind.
 
I glanced at mother's face—beautiful and as ever—with the little net-work of delicate wrinkles spread over its soft surface, and the blue eyes content as a young girl's beneath the shadow of the thick white hair. It was what Joyce's face might grow to be some day, although at that time there were lines of character about the mouth which my sister's beauty lacked; it was what my face could never grow to. But surely neither of those two had any misgivings. "And the life of the world to come," repeated mother, gravely, saying the words a little after everybody else in a kind of way. But, somehow, I wondered whether she had really been thinking of what they meant, for she sat down again with almost a smile upon her lips and smoothed out her soft old black brocade without any air of solemnity.
 
I glanced at Joyce. Her eyes were bent down looking at her hands—large, well-shaped, useful hands, that looked better in the dairy or at her needle than they did in ill-fitting kid-gloves; her face was undisturbed, the lovely little chin resting on the white bow of the ribbon that tied on her fresh chip-. It was before the days when it was considered respectable to go to church in a hat.
 
I, too, had a white chip-bonnet—Joyce had brought them both from London, together with the blue merino frocks, which we also wore that day; but I did not look as well in a chip-bonnet as Joyce did.
 
I glanced along the row of pews. At the end of the one parallel with ours across the sat Reuben in his clean smock, his fine old parchment-colored face set in the quiet lines induced by sleepiness and the suitable mood for the occasion. Deborah, as I have said, came rarely to church; she always declared that a deafness, which I had never noticed in her, made the coming but a mere form, for "what was the use if you couldn't extinguish the parson?" But Reuben was a and constant attendant, and looked better in keeping with the place than did the owner of two keen gray eyes, just beyond him, that I noticed were upon my sister's face.
 
They were as soon as I turned my head, although they did not look at me, but I paid no further attention to the service that day, and for all the good I got of the sermon I might as well have stayed at home.
 
And yet we had a fine discourse—or so father said as we came out of church—for it was from the curate of the next parish, that young Mr. Cyril Morland, to whom he had taken such a fancy, and it was for the schools, and touched on father's subject in father's own way. If I had cared to look round at him again I should have seen that his weary eyes had all their usual fire, and that his head was raised gazing at the impassioned young speaker.
 
But I did not look at father again. I sat with my eyes fixed on the old tombstone at my right, on which the mail-clad figure of an ancient ; and, for aught I knew or cared, the preacher might have been the sleepy old vicar himself, clearing his throat and enunciating his well-worn sentiments. I don't remember just what my thoughts were—perhaps I could not have put them into words even then; but I know they were not of God, nor of the poor little wretched children for whom our charity was asked. When the plate came round at the end it awoke me from a dream; ah me! it was not a good dream nor a happy dream. I wondered if people were often so wicked in church.
 
When the service was over father went round to the back and took up little David Jarrett, whom he had carried into church. The little fellow was supposed to be better, but he did not look as though he would be long for this world, and I think he grew nearer every day to father's heart.
 
The vicar's young wife to him as he went out in father's arms.
 
"You've got a very kind friend, David," she said to the child, in her weak, voice. "I ............