Very shortly after our little party separated, it was time to go back to London to Derwent’s treadmill; our holiday was over--and as Alice had positively declined my invitation to go with us to London, we were again for several months quite separated from our country friends. I heard from them in the meantime various scraps of information, from which I could gather vaguely how their individual concerns went on. Mr. Reredos was again a visitor at the cottage, and Mrs. Harley, who was not in the secret of his previous rejection, wrote to me two or three long, anxious, confidential letters about his evident devotion to her dear girl--and what did I think of it? It was, the good mother said, the position of all others which she would choose for her daughter, if it lay in her decision--a country clergyman’s wife, the same position which she herself had held long ago, when Dr. Harley lived, and she was happy!--but she could not make out what Alice’s mind was. Alice was sometimes cordial and sometimes distant to this candidate for her favor--“And I often fear that it will just be with Mr. Reredos as with the rest,” said Mrs. Harley, despondingly--“and I like him so much--he reminds me of what her dear father was once--and the connection would altogether be so eligible that I should be very sorry if it came to nothing. Do you think, dear Mrs. Crofton, that you could use your influence with her on this subject? My dear girl is so shocked and disgusted with the idea of people marrying for an establishment, that I really do not venture to say a word to her about her own establishment in life; but _you_ know as well as I do, dear Mrs. Crofton, that such things must be thought of, and really this is so thoroughly eligible”---- Alice followed on the same key. “Mamma teases me again on that everlasting subject, dear Mrs. Crofton; there is some one so completely eligible, she says--and I quite feel it--so entirely eligible that if there was not another in the world! Mamma is provoked, and says if somebody came who was quite the reverse of eligible that I should answer differently--and indeed I am not sure but there is justice in what she says. But do interfere on my behalf, please; I prefer to be always Alice Harley--do, please, dear Mrs. Crofton, persuade my mother not to worry me, but to believe that I know my own mind.” From which double correspondence I inferred that Mr. Reredos had somehow managed to resume his suit and to make a partisan of Mrs. Harley without giving a desperate and hopeless affront to the pride of Alice, which raised my opinion of his generalship so greatly that I began to imagine there might possibly be some likelihood of success for the Rector--a conclusion which I fear did not gratify me so much as Mrs. Harley had imagined it should.