"And his mother! he's no worse on that account, Jemima, not in the sense in which I use the word. You'll not move him, but you will the girl; there's your objective. In her way, unless I'm mistaken, she's as pig-headed as he is. He may use all the eloquence he has at his command, but, after what you said to her, and the way in which you put things, I doubt if she'll marry him though he pleads till he is dumb--they are a pair of Quixotes; when it comes to rank, downright Quixotry, she'll beat him on his own ground." And the lady considered her lord's words. "I shouldn't be surprised," she admitted, "if you are right." "I know I'm right," he said. "I haven't come to my time of life without being a student of human nature." CHAPTER XII IN THE WOOD On the Sunday morning Nora went to church alone. Miss Harding, who did not appear at breakfast, sent word that she had a headache and hoped that Nora would excuse her; which Nora was glad to do; she preferred to go alone. For the first time for some days the sky was overcast; the sun was hidden, as if the clerk of the weather desired to show that he was in sympathy with the girl's feelings. Certainly the girl's mood was not a sunny one. The church was distant from the house about a mile. The way to it was through the grounds; along a footpath through the wood, across Farmer Snelling's thirty-acre field, into the copse on the other side, where the first daffodils were always found; when you were out of the copse almost in front of you was the Rectory Lane; a hundred yards along the lane, turn sharply to the left, there was the lych-gate under which, aforetime, more parish coffins rested than men had count of. As she went the familiar way, amid the many evidences of the hasting spring, the spirit of the morning seemed to enter into her, so that, as she passed into the church, and knelt where she had knelt so many times in happier days, the peace of God came into her soul and she knew, with an abiding sense of comfort, that indeed all things are in His hands. She never forgot that morning's service; the last at which she was privileged to be a worshipper in what she had thought would always be, in a special sense, her own church; the memory was with her, as a sweet savour, in the still darker days which were to come. It was Palm Sunday, for Easter was late that year; the hour of the Church's mourning was close at hand; the appointed service for the day seemed to be peculiarly suited to her own case; before it was at an end her thoughts ceased to be centred on herself; her head, and her heart, were both abased before a sorrow that was greater than hers. When she came out, at the close of service, she was surrounded by people, villagers and others, for there was not a creature in the parish, good or bad, high or low, with whom she was not on terms of intimacy; unconsciously she illustrated the doctrine that--