Laurence said nothing. He was not going to tell this worthy and virtuously irate matron, that he did mind very much. No matter how he felt himself, he would have every one else think well of Maddie. He would hardly admit to his own heart that she was not _quite_ perfect, that he was beginning to feel sorely jealous of her father, her fine surroundings, and her fashionable friends. However, there was no use in thinking; what he had to do was to work, and endeavour to win for himself name, fame, and fortune. The next morning he set himself to make a real beginning. He packed up his slender belongings, he took his last walk round the fields and garden with farmer Holt, he consigned his son to the care of his kind hostess for the present, and, promising to run down often and look them up, he, in his turn, was taken to the station by the chestnut colt, and departed to make a fresh start in life, whilst the burly farmer stood on the platform and flourished his adieux with a red-spotted handkerchief. Then, returning slowly home, agreed with the missus in finding the place “summat lonely-like now,” in missing their late inmate, and in praising him up to the skies. Mrs. Holt was inclined to improve the occasion by drawing invidious comparisons between Mr. Wynne and his wife. “She was not like him--he had more true worth in his little finger than she had in the whole of her body,” etc. But the worthy master, who had not been blind to Madeline’s pretty face and fascinating smiles, would not listen for a moment to such treason, and told his better half, rather sharply, to “hold her tongue!” Laurence Wynne took up his quarters in the Temple temporarily--in a set of gloomy old chambers, with small, narrow windows and small panes, looking out on nothing in particular--at any rate he had no view to distract his attention from his work, and of work he had plenty.