“A man was never meant to sit in a velvet chair and talk fine. It is all one for a French Abbé and a few old women in men’s clothing to sit round the room and chop logic with a learned spinster like Mademoiselle Scudéry; but men must live _sub Jove_, unless they are statesmen or clerks. They must have horses and hounds, gun and spaniel, hawk or rod. I am glad Fareham loves sport. And as for that talk of conspiring, let me not hear it from thee, Hyacinth. ’Tis a perilous discourse to but hint at treason; and your husband is a loyal gentleman who loves, and”—with a wry face—“reveres—his King.” “Oh, I was only jesting. But, indeed, a man who so disparages the things other people love must needs be a rebel at heart. Did you hear of Monsieur de Malfort while you were at Paris?” The inquiry was made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden pain; but the soldier’s senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of an adventurer’s life, and he was not on the alert for shades of feeling. Angela accepted her father’s return, with the new duties it imposed upon her, as if it had been a decree of Heaven. She put aside all consideration of that refuge which would have meant so complete a renunciation and farewell. On her knees that night, in the midst of fervent prayers, her tears streamed fast at the thought that, secure in the shelter of her father’s love, in the peaceful solitude of her native valley, she could look to a far-off future when she and Fareham might meet with out fear of sin, when no cloud of passion should darken his brotherly affection for her; when his heart, now estranged from holy things, would have returned to the faith of his ancestors, reconciled to God and the Church. She could but think of him now as a fallen angel—a wanderer who had strayed far from the only light and guide of human life, and was thus a mark for the tempter. What lesser power than Satan’s could have so turned good to evil; the friendship of a brother to the base passion which had made so wide a gulf between them; and which must keep them strangers till he was cured of his sin? Only to diabolical possession could she ascribe the change that had come over him since those happy days when she had watched the slow dawn of health upon his sunken cheeks, when he and she had travelled together through the rich autumn woods, along the pleasant English roads, and when, in the leisure of the slow journey, he had poured out his thoughts to her, the story of his life, his opinions, expatiating in fraternal confidence upon the things he loved and the things he hated. And at Chilton, she looked back and remembered his goodness to her, the pains he had taken in choosing horses for her to ride, their long mornings on the river with Henriette, their hawking parties, and in all his tender brotherly care of her. The change in him had come about by almost imperceptible degrees: but it had been chiefly marked