Elsmere, however, merely stood his ground, arguing and bantering, till the Squire grudgingly gave way. This time, after he departed, Mr. Wendover, instead of going to his work, still stood gloomily ruminating in front of the fire. His frowning eyes wandered round the great room before him. For the first time he was conscious that now, as soon as the charm of Elsmere’s presence was withdrawn, his working hours were doubly solitary; that his loneliness weighed upon him more; and that it mattered to him appreciably whether that young man went or stayed. The stirring of a new sensation, however-unparalleled since the brief days when even Roger Wendover had his friends and his attractions like other men--was soon lost in renewed chafing at Elsmere’s absurdities. The Squire had been at first perfectly content--so he told himself--to limit the field of their intercourse, and would have been content to go on doing so. But Elsmere himself had invited freedom of speech between them. ‘I would have given him my best,’ Mr. Wendover reflected impatiently. ‘I could have handed on to him all I shall never use, and he might use, admirably. And now we might as well be on the terms we were to begin with for all the good I get out of him, or he out of me. Clearly nothing but cowardice! He cannot face the intellectual change, and he must, I suppose, dread lest it should affect his work. Good God, what nonsense! As if any one inquired what an English parson believed nowadays, so long as he performs all the usual antics decently!’ And, meanwhile, it never occurred to the Squire that Elsmere had a wife, and a pious one. Catherine had been dropped out of his calculation as to Elsmere’s future, at a very early stage. The following afternoon Robert, coming home from a round, found Catherine out, and a note awaiting him from the Hall. ‘Can you and Mrs. Elsmere come in to tea?’ wrote the Squire. ‘Madame de Netteville is here, and one or two others.’ Robert grumbled a good deal, looked for Catherine to devise an excuse for him, could not find her, and at last reluctantly set out again alone. He was tired and his mood was heavy. As he trudged through the park he never once noticed the soft, sun-flooded distance, the shining loops of the river, the feeding dear, or any of those natural witcheries to which eye and sense were generally so responsive. The laborers going home, the children--with aprons full of crab-apples, and lips dyed by the first blackberries--who passed him, got but an absent smile or salute from the Rector. The interval of exaltation and recoil was over. The ship of the mind was once more laboring in alien and dreary seas. He roused himself to remember that he had been curious to see Madame de Netteville. She was an old friend of the Squire’s, the holder of a London salon, much more exquisite and select than anything Lady Charlotte could show.