“Come, come, Struan; we quite understand all your emotions without that. This makes you a very bigoted ambassador in our case. You meant to bring back all the truth, of course. But when you found the fishing good, and the people roughly hospitable, and above all, a Danish smack in their manners, and figures, and even their eyes, which have turned on the Kentish soil, I am told, to a deep and very brilliant brown----” “Yes, Roland, you are right for once. At any rate, it is so with her.” “Very well. Then you being, as you always are, a sudden man--what did you do but fall in love (in an elderly fatherly manner, of course) with this--what is her name, now again? I never can recollect it.” “You do. You never forget anything. Her name is Mabel. And you may be glad to pronounce it pretty often, in your old age, Sir Roland.” “Well, it is a pretty name, and deserves a pretty bearer. But, Struan, you are a man of the world. You know what Hilary is; and you know (though we do not give ourselves airs, and drive four horses in a hideous yellow coach, and wear diamond rings worth a thousand pounds), you know what the Lorraines have always been--a little particular in their ways, and a little inclined to, to, perhaps----” “To look down on the rest of the world, without ever letting them know it, or even knowing it yourselves, perhaps. Have I hit it aright, Sir Roland?” “Not quite that. Indeed, nothing could be further from what I was thinking of.” Sir Roland Lorraine sighed gently here; and even his brother-in-law had not the least idea why he did so. It was that Sir Roland, like all the more able Lorraines for several centuries, was at heart a fatalist. And this family taint had perhaps been deepened by the infusion of Eastern blood. This was the bar so often fixed between them and the rest of the world--a barrier which must hold good, while every man cares for his neighbour’s soul, so much more than his own for ever. “Is it anything in religion, Roland?” the Rector whispered kindly. “I know that you are not orthodox, and a good deal puffed up with carnal knowledge. Still, if it is in my line at all; I am not a very high authority--but perhaps I might lift you over it. They are saying all sorts of things now in the world; and I have taken two hours a-day, several days--now you need not laugh--in a library we have got up at Horsham, filled with the best divinity; so as to know how to answer them.” “My dear Struan,” Sir Roland replied, without so much as the gleam of a smile, “that was really good of you. And you now have so many other things to attend to with young dogs, and that; and the 1st of September next week, I believe! What a relief that must be to you!”