He had come out, indeed, determined somehow to break down the barrier he felt rising between them. But it was not easy. They talked for long of the most obvious and mundane things. There were salmon in the Greet this month, and Helbeck had been waging noble war with them in the intervals of much business, with Laura often beside him, to join in the madness of the "rushes" down stream, to watch the fine strength of her lover's wrist, to shrink from the gaffing, and to count the spoil. The shooting days at Bannisdale were almost done, since the land had dwindled to a couple of thousand acres, much of it on the moss. But there were still two or three poor coverts along the upper edge of the park, where the old Irish keeper and woodman, Tim Murphy, cherished and counted the few score pheasants that provided a little modest November sport. And Helbeck, tying the pony to a tree, went up now with Laura to walk round the woods, showing in all his comments and calculations a great deal of shrewd woodcraft and beastcraft, enough to prove at any rate that the Esau of his race--_feras consumere nati_, to borrow the emendation of Mr. Fielding--had not yet been wholly cast out by the Jacob of a mystical piety. Laura tripped and climbed, applauded by his eye, helped by his hand. But though her colour came back, her spirits were still to seek. She was often silent, and he hardly ever spoke to her without feeling a start run through the hand he held. His grey eye tried to read her, but in vain. At last he wooed her from the fell-side where they were scrambling. "Come down to the river and rest." Hand in hand they descended the steep slope to that rock-seat where he had found her on the morning of Easter Sunday. The great thorn which overhung it was then in bud; now the berries which covered the tree were already reddening to winter. Before her spread the silver-river, running to lose itself in the rocky bosom of that towering scar which closed the distance, whereon, too, all the wealth of the woods on either hand converged--the woods that hid the outer country, and all that was not Bannisdale and Helbeck's. To-day, however, Laura felt no young passion of pleasure in the beauty at her feet. She was ill at ease, and her look fled his as he glanced up to her from the turf where he had thrown himself. "Do you like me to read your books?" she said abruptly, her question swooping hawk-like upon his and driving it off the field. He paused--to consider, and to smile. "I don't know. I believe you read them perversely!" "I know what you read this morning. Do you--do you think St. Francis Borgia was a very admirable person?" "Well, I got a good deal of edification out of him," said Helbeck quietly. "Did you? Would you be like him if you could? Do you remember when his wife was very ill, and he was praying for her, he heard a voice--do you remember?" "Go on," said Helbeck, nodding.