To speak to Lord Venniker or to Harry was alike impossible. They were too much occupied in their own pursuits to have any suspicion of the subtle, delightful, dreadful feeling that had sprung up in his heart. He was confident that the revelation of it would fill them with astonishment, perhaps with indignation. Lord Venniker had said to Gerald more than once that Ethel was growing up to be as her mother was when he saw and loved her. And Gerald, who knew Lord Venniker’s devotion to his wife, who knew the feeling of adoration with which he regarded her, heard in Lord Venniker’s words the prohibition of his soul’s hope. But if Gerald Eversley was thus tongue-tied at Helmsbury upon the one subject of which his heart was full, what could he say about it at Kestercham? His visits to his home, as has been said, had become rare, and they lasted but for a few days. A feeling of reserve had grown up between his father and himself; they no longer walked and talked together as in old days. Still he went home from time to time, he had sometimes nowhere else to go; and Mr. Eversley, in spite of his great sorrow at his son’s alienation from religion--an alienation which in his theology involved eternal ruin--could not altogether resist a secret unavowed satisfaction at hearing of his remarkable academical successes. Still Mr. Eversley and his son had many secrets from each other now; and even in the days when the community of thought between them was greatest, Mr. Eversley would have felt that the mere idea of a matrimonial alliance with the aristocratic house of Venniker was a presumption bordering upon madness. Yet it had occurred to Mr. Eversley, noting, as he did, every phase and symptom of his son’s religious speculations, that during the last two or three months there had been a change, not indeed definitely marked, but still unmistakable, in Gerald’s attitude towards religion in his home. He hardly knew what to make of this change. In his own simple way he put it down as an answer to prayer. He thanked God for it, and prayed yet more earnestly that it would please Him to lead his dear boy back again to the foot of the Cross. He did not venture as yet to say a word to Gerald about it. He did not dream of connecting it with any other cause than the converting grace of the Holy Spirit. That love itself could be a proselytising influence, that Gerald had in fact given his heart not to Christ only, but to Miss Venniker, were thoughts that would not enter into his father’s ingenuous mind. But it was a pleasure to him passing words that Gerald one day, without saying anything to him, appeared in church. He renewed his prayers once more. Who will doubt that such prayers as his are heard in heaven, though the answer is given, as it seems to us, in many strange ways?