“Whitbourne suits him better in the summer, and in truth he needs more air after his imprisonment, and all his anxiety about my grandmother,” replied Hilary. “You’ll never know how grateful we were to you for what you did for him while he was in the Tower; he told me that no grandson could have been more attentive and thoughtful.” “It was little enough I could do,” said Gabriel, “and everybody must love one like the Bishop.” “Do you know what Durdle said just now?--she has, you know, a very shrewd notion of the truth about us, though she has never been told in so many words--she protested that had you not wanted to come back here and see me you would have been riding off to offer your services to His Majesty.” Gabriel started, a strange look dawned in his eyes; the suggestion had evidently awakened a train of thought that was far from pleasant. Hilary fancied that he shrank from the idea of leaving her, and only loved him the better for it, even though that thought of fastening on his armour still allured her. “Had you no longing to take part in this war?” she asked, watching his thoughtful face. “Such a notion never occurred to me,” he said. “My hope is that one great battle may be fought within the next few days, which will decide the vexed question once for all.” In this he only expressed the anticipation of most people. “Yet somehow I should have expected you to want to have your share in fighting for the right,” said Hilary. He seemed about to speak but checked himself, and Hilary, with a puzzled consciousness that something she did not understand was troubling him, watched him anxiously. “You are shivering!” she exclaimed the next minute. “What is amiss?” But Gabriel did not easily put his deepest feelings into words; he could not explain to her at that moment what fighting for the right might mean for him, any more than years ago he could have told her of his childish wish to follow in Eliot’s steps. The torture of the sudden perception that the cause he had learned to hold sacred would assuredly lose for him Hilary’s sympathy and approval made him silently turn to her and clasp her in his arms with a passion far too deep for speech. Then, releasing her, he hastily rose, and picking up the basket of apricots, resumed with an effort his usual manner. “Do you not want these carried to the still-room?” he asked. “Stoning is the next process, if I remember right.” “Why, to be sure,” said Hilary, laughing. “Stoning with a good deal of eating intermixed. I think one in twenty used to be Durdle’s allowance.” “Here she comes to set the limit,” said Gabriel, with a smile. “She bustles about more briskly than ever; and look how her face beams!--something extraordinary must have happened.”