“No—in order that I might try to win for myself such a friend as you are to Mr. Dering, or as Mr. Dering is to you.” “But your mission is a sweeter one than that of friendship: you were sent into the world to love.” “That is what men always say of women. But to me, friendship always seems so much purer and nobler than love. Love—as I have read and heard—is so selfish and exacting, and——” “Jane, dear, where are you?” Jane gave a start, and Tom sank back into the shade. “Coming, dear, in one moment,” cried Jane. Then she whispered hurriedly to Tom: “Be here at half-past eleven to-night with Mr. Dering.” She gave him her fingers for a moment and was gone. For four days and four nights Lionel Dering lay in hiding at Pincote. Jane waited upon him herself, and so carefully was the secret kept that no one under that roof—inmate, guest, or servant—had the slightest suspicion of anything out of the ordinary course. Meanwhile, Tom Bristow had paid a flying visit down into the wilds of Cumberland, among which, as incumbent of a tiny parish buried among the hills, was settled an old chum of Lionel—George Granton by name. To him, at Lionel’s request, Tom told everything, and then asked him whether he would take Dering as a guest under his roof for two or three months to come. In the warmest manner possible Granton agreed to do this, and Tom and he became fast friends on the spot. Two days later Lionel bade farewell to Pincote and its youthful mistress, and set out on his journey to the north. Tom and he started together one evening near midnight, and walked across country to a little roadside station some fifteen miles away, on a line different from that which ran though Duxley. Here they were in time to catch the early parliamentary train, and here the two friends bade each other goodbye for a little while. Lionel travelled under the name of the Rev. Horace Brown, and that was the name on the one small portmanteau which formed his solitary article of luggage. He had injured his health by over-study, and he was going down into Cumberland to recruit. He was closely shaven, his complexion was dark, and his hair jet black. Being somewhat weak-sighted, he wore a pair of large blue spectacles. His hat, far from new, and rather broad in the brim, was set well back on his head, giving him a simple countrified expression. He wore a white cravat, and a collar that was rather limp, and a long clerical coat that reached below his knees; while his black kid gloves were baggy and too long in the fingers. In one hand he carried an alpaca umbrella badly rolled up, and in the other—the weather being moist and muddy—a pair of huge goloshes, of which he seemed to take especial care. Such, in outward semblance, was the Rev. Horace Brown.