Her presence and the surroundings filled me with a sense of purity and peace, and I surrendered myself to the primitive emotions. I suppose a less subtle soul would have been oppressed with a sense of past sins, and would in such a building have been filled with despair at the consciousness of irrevocable guilt. I fortunately had schooled myself to control. The sensation of goodness can, like other things, be acquired. When I had obtained the prize for which I was striving I had not the least doubt that I should find it easy to put away from me any unworthy feeling of regret. Why should I not? The harm was after all very questionable. It was not as if, so far, I had made widows and orphans. The amount of suffering I had inflicted was limited, and at any rate I should not leave poverty, the greatest of all ills, in my track. Indeed, under the influence of that Sunday morning service I felt quite regenerated. When we left the church Esther Lane and her pupil went through the great gates of the castle into the woods beyond, and I would have given worlds to follow her, but Lady Branksome told me that she agreed with her son, and that I was decidedly amusing. She insisted on my going for a walk with her. At the same time she took good care to see that Mr. Puttock and Lady Enid were close behind. In the afternoon I manœuvred a meeting with Esther Lane. I surmised that she and her pupil would walk away from the castle, and so I kept watch on the drawbridge. Everybody was more or less occupied. I was aware that Lady Branksome had, before retiring for her afternoon nap, left Mr. Puttock in possession of Lady Enid, who had got rid of him with all the ease imaginable, and was now walking with Sir Cheveley on the battlements. Lord Gascoyne had pleaded letters, and I had arranged to fetch him in an hour or so and go for a tramp. As Esther Lane and her pupil crossed the drawbridge I was leaning over the extreme end of the parapet in the most natural manner in the world. I pretended not to notice them, and only permitted myself to be aroused from a contemplation of the beautiful scenery which lay below by the child flinging his arms with a scream of delight round my legs. She blushed as she apologised for her charge. She was evidently a little nervous as to what her employers might think if they saw her walking with one of their guests, and, after a short interchange of commonplaces, tried to get rid of me. I refused to be shaken off, and a couple of hundred yards took us out of sight of the castle. We dropped at once into a style of conversation which was almost intimate, and although I was with her barely three quarters of an hour she confided a great deal in me.