“It’s a new way of looking at it—to me,” she said; “but it seems a _true_ way, also. However, I won’t deal in generalities, with an old friend like you! For we _are_ old friends, somehow. Do you know, I think we _began_ as old friends?” she said with a playfulness of tone that ill accorded with the tears that glistened in her eyes. “Thank you very much for saying so,” I replied. “I like to think of you as an _old_ friend,” (“—though you don’t look it!” would have been the almost necessary sequence, with any other lady; but she and I seemed to have long passed out of the time when compliments, or any such trivialities, were possible.) Here the train paused at a station, where two or three passengers entered the carriage; so no more was said till we had reached our journey’s end. On our arrival at Elveston, she readily adopted my suggestion that we should walk up together; so, as soon as our luggage had been duly taken charge of—hers by the servant who met her at the station, and mine by one of the porters—we set out together along the familiar lanes, now linked in my memory with so many delightful associations. Lady Muriel at once recommenced the conversation at the point where it had been interrupted. “You knew of my engagement to my cousin Eric. Did you also hear——” “Yes,” I interrupted, anxious to spare her the pain of giving any details. “I heard it had all come to an end.” “I would like to tell you how it happened,” she said; “as that is the very point I want your advice about. I had long realised that we were not in sympathy in religious belief. His ideas of Christianity are very shadowy; and even as to the existence of a God he lives in a sort of dreamland. But it has not affected his life! I feel sure, now, that the most absolute Atheist _may_ be leading, though walking blindfold, a pure and noble life. And if you knew half the good deeds——” she broke off suddenly, and turned away her head. “I entirely agree with you,” I said. “And have we not our Saviour’s own promise that such a life shall surely lead to the light?” “Yes, I know it,” she said in a broken voice, still keeping her head turned away. “And so I told him. He said he would believe, for _my_ sake, if he could. And he wished, for _my_ sake, he could see things as I did. But that is all wrong!” she went on passionately. “God _cannot_ approve such low motives as that! Still it was not _I_ that broke it off. I knew he loved me; and I had _promised_; and——” “Then it was _he_ that broke it off?” “He released me unconditionally.” She faced me again now, having quite recovered her usual calmness of manner. “Then what difficulty remains?”