He was living in danger of at least a very sound thrashing from the girl’s brothers if not from her village suitor, and it was most probable that should matters become acute he would—although not deficient in courage—leave the situation to settle itself without him, and the girl to take care of herself. Perhaps the brothers might not find out; young Gascoyne might ride away; the girl might dry her eyes and in time wed her village admirer, who would remain in ignorance of the guilty little episode in her life. If the brothers found out, were they the sort of men likely to take a violent revenge, and if they were not was the lover such a man? It was worth ascertaining. I decided to spend the next week-end at the village where the girl and her relations lived. Later, young Gascoyne showed me over the Grange. There was not very much to see. It was a fairly roomy house, commenced in the Tudor style, and completed, or rather building operations had ceased, in the early Victorian. The latter age was marked by a hideous oblong, stucco wing devoted to servants and kitchen premises. Every other age had given the building something fairly picturesque, but the early Victorian era had given something worthy of itself. The semicircular porch with its white columns, unmistakably Carolian in character; the Elizabethan red brick and mullioned panes, the Georgian drawing-room, and low-ceilinged hall, all made a delightful jumble, and hardly deserved young Gascoyne’s contemptuous remark that it was a ‘ramshackle old place,’ true in actual fact as such description was. The room which had been his father’s sanctum was now his; a delightful room with a south aspect and the only view which was not to a certain extent impeded by trees. Through the half open door of Miss Gascoyne’s bedroom I caught a glimpse of a prie Dieu and a large crucifix above it. Evidently Miss Gascoyne was High Church and devotional. We joined her in the garden for tea. The sun was yellowing through the pines, with here and there a faint suggestion of evening crimson, ere I rose and said good-bye. She evidently liked me, for she asked me to come again, and seconded her brother when he pressed me to run down from Saturday till Monday whenever I liked. For a Hebrew youth to have travelled so far in Miss Gascoyne’s estimation in so short a time was an achievement. Young Gascoyne walked back as far as the inn with me, talking volubly of when we should meet again and of what a lot we were to see of each other in town. I rode back thinking a good deal of Miss Gascoyne. I hold—what to the female mind is a heresy—that a man may be in love with half a dozen women at once.