'But she looked pale to-night. She is not in fresh trouble, is she, Aunt Milly?' 'No, only the misunderstanding gets more every day; we must all do what we can to lighten her load.' Richard made no answer, he seemed thinking deeply; even after Mildred left him he remained in the same place. 'One of these days she must know it, and why not now?' he said to himself, and there was a strange concentrated light in his eyes as he said it. CHAPTER XIX THE HEART OF COEUR-DE-LION 'At length, as suddenly become aware Of this long pause, she lifted up her face, And he withdrew his eyes--she looked so fair And cold, he thought, in her unconscious grace. Ah! little dreams she of the restless care, He thought, that makes my heart to throb apace: Though we this morning part, the knowledge sends No thrill to her calm pulse--we are but Friends!' Jean Ingelow. Mildred pondered long and sorrowfully that night over her friend's trouble. She knew it was no fancied or exaggerated recital of wrongs. The inmates of the vicarage had commented openly on the Squire's changed looks and bearing. His cordiality had always savoured more or less of condescension, but latterly he had held himself aloof from his neighbours, and there had been a gloomy reserve in his manner that had made him well-nigh unapproachable. Irritable and ready to take offence, and quick to resent even a difference of opinion, he was already on bad terms with more than one of his neighbours. Dr. Heriot's well-deserved popularity, and his plainness of speech, had already given umbrage to his jealous and haughty temperament. It was noticed on all sides that the Doctor was a less frequent visitor at Kirkleatham House, and that Mr. Trelawny was much given to carp at any expressed opinion that emanated from that source. This was incomprehensible, to say the least of it, as he had always been on excellent terms with both father and daughter; but little did any one guess the real reason of so inexplicable a change. Ethel was right when she acknowledged that ambition was her father's besetting sin; the petty interests of squirearchal life had never satiated his dominant passion and thirst for power. Side by side with his ambition, and narrow aims there was a vacuum that he would fain have filled with work of a broader type, and with a pertinacity that would have been noble but for its subtle egotism, he desired to sit among the senators of his people. Twice had he essayed and twice been beaten, and it had been whispered that his hands were not quite clean, with the cleanness of a man to whom corruption is a hideous snare; and still, with a dogged resolution that ought to have served him, he determined that one day, and at all costs, his desire should be accomplished.