‘I might forgive, but I should never forget.’ ‘My dear,’ the Rector had said, ‘Roger has himself to look to: we are not able to do very much for him; and Cara will be a kind of heiress. I should not mind any trifle of that sort, if he has serious views.’ ‘What do you call serious views?’ cried Roger, ashamed and wretched, and he plunged out of the house without waiting for an answer, and betook himself to those wintry woods of which Agnes was thinking at the ‘House,’ and which even in winter were sweet. Roger had no sordid intentions, which was what his father meant by ‘serious’ views; and though he was well enough satisfied with his daily work, and not, like Agnes, troubled by any ideal, yet he felt, like his sister, the wretched downfall of existence into misery and meanness, between his mother’s prolonged and exaggerated resentment and his father’s serious worldliness. That boyish love of his was the highest thing in the young man’s mind. If nothing else that was visionary existed in his nature, his semi-adoration of Cara, which had lasted as long as he could recollect, was visionary, a touch of poetry amid his prose, and to hear it opposed, or to hear it sordidly encouraged alike shocked and revolted him. He resolved never to mention Cara’s name again, nor to make any reference to the Square, to shut up his sentiments about her in his own bosom, whether these were sentiments of admiration or of offence. Supposing she was cold to him--and it would be very natural that she should be cold, as he had never gone back to her, nor visited her but once--he would bear it and make no sign; never again would he subject her name to comments such as these. Fathers and mothers do badly by their children when they force them to such a resolution. Roger kept his word all through the weary Sunday, and did not say even that he would not return home for the next; but he made his arrangements all the same.