‘Let me see,’ he said, deliberating, ‘have I any engagement I must keep?’ There was a sort of jealousy for his work within him contending with this new fascination of the Squire’s company. But, honestly, there was nothing in the way, and he went. That walk was the first of many. The Squire had no sooner convinced himself that young Elsmere’s society did in reality provide him with a stimulus and recreation he had been too long without, than in his imperious wilful way he began to possess himself of it as much as possible. He never alluded to the trivial matters which had first separated and then united them. He worked the better, he thought the more clearly, for these talks and walks with Elsmere, and therefore these talks and walks became an object with him. They supplied a long-stifled want, the scholar’s want of disciples, of some form of investment for all that heaped-up capital of thought he had been accumulating during a life-time. As for Robert, he soon felt himself so much under the spell of the Squire’s strange and powerful personality that he was forced to make a fight for it, lest this new claim should encroach upon the old one. He would walk when the Squire liked, but three times out of four these walks must be parish rounds, interrupted by descents into cottages and chats in farmhouse parlors. The Squire submitted. The neighborhood began to wonder over the strange spectacle of Mr. Wendover waiting grimly in the winter dusk outside one of his own farmhouses while Elsmere was inside, or patrolling a bit of lane till Elsmere should have inquired after an invalid or beaten up a recruit for his confirmation class, dogged the while by stealthy children, with fingers in their mouths, who ran away in terror directly he turned. Rumors of this new friendship spread. One day, on the bit of road between the Hall and the Rectory, Lady Helen behind her ponies whirled past the two men, and her arch look at Elsmere said as plain as words, ‘Oh, you young wonder! what hook has served you with this leviathan? On another occasion, close to Churton, a man in a cassock and cloak came toward them. The Squire put up his eye-glass. ‘Humph!’ he remarked; ‘do you know this merryandrew, Elsmere?’ It was Newcome. As they passed, Robert with slightly, heightened color gave him an affectionate nod and smile. Newcome’s quick eye ran over the companions, he responded stiffly, and his step grew more rapid. A week or two later Robert noticed with a little prick of remorse that he had seen nothing of Newcome for an age. If Newcome would not come to him, he must go to Mottringham. He planned an expedition, but something happened to prevent it.