Beaufort gave a half-conscious glance towards the spot outside where the black-browed children were playing. He felt, perhaps, that it would not be so easy to take up the story where it had dropped; but he assented, with quiet gentleness soothing her. ‘I am always fond of wandering. I have done little else all my life--and with you!’ ‘Yes, with you!’ she repeated. She was accustomed to the children, and did not think of the anachronism of their presence at the moment of taking up the story. ‘You shall take me to all the new places where you have been alone, and we’ll go to the old places where we were that summer together; we’ll go everywhere and see everything, and then when all the novelty is exhausted we shall come back and make a home of our own. And then, Edward, you shall be left free for your work. How we used to talk of it _that_ summer! You have not done much to it yet?’ ‘Nothing at all,’ he said, with something like a blush. ‘So much the better,’ cried Lady Car. ‘I should have been jealous had you done it without me--you could not do it without me. You shall not touch a pen while we are away, but observe everything, and investigate mankind in all aspects, and then we’ll come home--and then, Edward, what care I shall take that you are not disturbed--how shall I watch and keep off every care! You shall have no trouble about anything, no noises or foolish interruption, no one to disturb you but me. And I will be no interruption.’ ‘Never, my love,’ he said fervently; but this was the only thing to which he responded clearly. He had not, perhaps, the same intentions about that great work as once he had. He did not see it in the same light; but it gave him a certain pleasure to see her enthusiasm. It surprised him, indeed, that she could be capable of that enthusiasm just as if the story had never dropped. Women, sweet souls! are so strange. There had been nothing in his life so definite as the Torrance marriage and the black-browed children; but yet she was capable of taking up the dropped story just where it had been thrown aside. So far as love went he felt himself capable of that too, but then he had not dropped the love when the story was dropped. Whereas she--In all these records there was something to be got over with a faint uneasiness, to be ignored if possible. He could not return with the same unity of mind as she displayed to the half-forgotten things of the past. But he was sure that her presence would never be any interruption, and he was pleased to fall into her eager, delightful plans, and to think of wandering with her wherever two people can wander, and when the two people are man and wife that is virtually everywhere. He was very ready for that dream of life.