“You’re a kind soul and I’m very glad, if you’ve got nothing better to do. My thoughts ain’t pleasant companions to-night, Mr. Knox.” “They should be,” he answered, “for your thoughts can’t bully you, nor yet accuse you of things left undone, or done ill, like most of us have got to suffer from them. You can face your thoughts same as you can face your deeds, with a good conscience all the time.” “Who can? I can’t. I’m cruel vexed now. That slip of a child, Daisy Finch, have been showing me that I may have been too hard on my own daughter. And yet—how can one feel too hard? ’Tisn’t as if I didn’t know Ned Dingle. But I do. He’s took this in a very Christian spirit—so far. I’d never have thought for a moment he’d have held in so well, or been such a gentleman over it. Some people might almost think he didn’t care and didn’t feel it; but he does—with all his heart he does. He couldn’t speak when I left him just now.” “That’s true—he certainly does feel it properly. But it’s a very peculiar case, along of Kellock being the man he is. I haven’t got to the bottom of the thing yet. As a rule I’m not great on other people’s business, as you know, but in this case, along of my hopes where you’re concerned, Lydia, I take this to be a part of my business; and I’m going to get to the bottom of it by strategy and find out what made him take her away from Ned.” “It don’t much matter now. The past is past and it won’t help us to know more than we know.” “You can’t say that. You can read the future in the past if you’ve got understanding eyes. And I haven’t hid from you I’m far from hopeful about the future, because I can’t see them two suiting each other through a lifetime. They won’t.” “So you said.” They stood to rest at a bend in the tremendous hill. Mr. Knox dabbed his brow with a red cotton handkerchief. “This blessed mountain brings the beads to the forehead every time I come up to it,” he declared. “You’re a wonder; you hop up like a bird.” “I’m Devonshire—born to hills.” “You can’t have valleys without ’em.” “That’s true. We’ve all got to take the rough with the smooth, and the steep with the level.” “To take the rough smoothly is the whole art of living,” declared Philander, “and I thought I was pretty clever at it till I met you. But you can give us all a start and a beating. Well, this may or may not be a likely moment to come back to the all important question; but impulse guides right as often as wrong, and if I’m wrong there’s no harm done I hope. Have you had time to turn it over, or have you been too busy?” “I owed it to you to turn it over,” she answered after a short pause. “You’ve got as much right to go on with your life as I have to go on with mine. Time don’t stand still because men and women are in two minds.” “If you’re in two minds—”