The Archdeacon looked thoughtfully at the figures of his daughter and guest, as, side by side, apparently in gay converse, they passed down the Vicar’s Walk that led through orchard and paddock, past the hoary church and mouldering churchyard into the road that led to the straggling rows of peasants’ and small farmers’ houses, with here and there a shop, that constitute the village of Caistorholm. He could not fail to observe that Eleanor took pleasure in the lawyer’s company, that her glance had been brighter, her face happier of late. Mr. St. Clair was glad that Edward’s stay at the Vicarage should be made pleasant to him, and that his daughter should find a visit that might have developed into a visitation an agreeable break in the monotony of rural life. It was, of course, eminently satisfactory that the stranger whom he had been advised to consult and to trust in a matter of the very gravest importance should turn out to be not only a sound and reliable lawyer and a shrewd business man, but also a well-educated, well-read man, with the manners of a gentleman. Mr. St. Clair’s acquaintance with solicitors was chiefly confined to the urbane practitioners who dealt in advowsons or were learned in dilapidations, and with them he had permitted himself rather a condescending affability. From the first he had recognised that he could not patronise Beaumont, and had enjoyed the discomfiture and amazement with which Squire Wright had retired from his attempt in that direction, and which had so affected him that he had given the Vicarage a wide berth ever since. But Mr. St. Clair told himself that, after all, he knew very little about Beaumont. His old college friend, Fortescue, had told him that he had heard the best accounts of Beaumont’s successful conduct of a difficult and delicate matter, in which a mutual friend had been embroiled, and on his recommendation, and not without some natural hesitation, he had invited Edward to his home, feeling that he would rather confide to a stranger living at a distance than to a Lincoln lawyer the whole story of what he was now fully persuaded had been his very foolish, nay, reckless speculations in the Skerne shares. With Edward as a legal adviser he felt that he had more than reason to be satisfied, and he had enjoyed his conversation and the interchange of thought not a little. But he noticed with anything but satisfaction that Edward had made his conversation very acceptable to the stately Eleanor, who was not easily pleased. Not one afternoon passed but the young people found some occasion for being together—a round of parochial visits in which Edward carried the basket, and supplemented Eleanor’s tracts with covert half-crowns to rheumatic and asthmatical pensioners; a drive in Eleanor’s pony-carriage to some object of antiquarian interest, an ancient tower or a ruined church—who does not know the devices by which the tedium of the country is enlivened for the visitor from the towns?