“Revd. Mr. Granger to see you. Told him you were engaged, but he said he would wait.” Geoffrey started violently, so violently that both the solicitor and the obstinate farmer looked up. “Tell the gentleman that I will see him in a minute,” he said to the retreating clerk, and then, addressing the farmer, “Well, sir, I have said all that I have to say. I cannot advise you to continue this action. Indeed, if you wish to do so, you must really direct your solicitor to retain some other counsel, as I will not be a party to what can only mean a waste of money. Good afternoon,” and he rose. The farmer was convoyed out grumbling. In another moment Mr. Granger entered, dressed in a somewhat threadbare suit of black, and his thin white hair hanging, as usual, over his eyes. Geoffrey glanced at him with apprehension, and as he did so noticed that he had aged greatly during the last seven months. Had he come to tell him some ill news of Beatrice—that she was ill, or dead, or going to be married? “How do you do, Mr. Granger?” he said, as he stretched out his hand, and controlling his voice as well as he could. “How are you? This is a most unexpected pleasure.” “How do you do, Mr. Bingham?” answered the old man, while he seated himself nervously in a chair, placing his hat with a trembling hand upon the floor beside him. “Yes, thank you, I am pretty well, not very grand—worn out with trouble as the sparks fly upwards,” he added, with a vague automatic recollection of the scriptural quotation. “I hope that Miss Elizabeth and Be—that your daughters are well also,” said Geoffrey, unable to restrain his anxiety. “Yes, yes, thank you, Mr. Bingham. Elizabeth isn’t very grand either, complains of a pain in her chest, a little bilious perhaps—she always is bilious in the spring.” “And Miss Beatrice?” “Oh, I think she’s well—very quiet, you know, and a little pale, perhaps; but she is always quiet—a strange woman Beatrice, Mr. Bingham, a very strange woman, quite beyond me! I do not understand her, and don’t try to. Not like other women at all, takes no pleasure in things seemingly; curious, with her good looks—very curious. But nobody understands Beatrice.” Geoffrey breathed a sigh of relief. “And how are tithes being paid, Mr. Granger? not very grandly, I fear. I saw that scoundrel Jones died in prison.”