"Take the omen! It is for _them_, in a sense--a spiritual sense--we are fighting. They belong not to any body of men that may chance to-day to call itself the English Church. They belong to _England_--in her aspect of faith--and to the English people!" There was a silence. His look came back to her face, and the prophetic glow died from his own. "I should be very, very sorry"--he said anxiously--"if anything I have said had given you pain." Mary shook her head. "No--not to me. I--I have my own thoughts. But one must think--of others." Her voice trembled. The words seemed to suggest everything that in her own personal history had stamped her with this sweet, shrinking look. Meynell was deeply touched. But he did not answer her, or pursue the conversation any farther. He gathered a great bunch of harebells for her, from the sun-warmed dells in the heather; and was soon making her laugh by his stories of colliery life and speech, _a propos_ of the colliery villages fringing the plain at their feet. * * * * * The stream, as they neared it, proved to be the boundary between the heath land and the pastures of the lower ground. It ran fresh and brimming between its rushy banks, shadowed here and there by a few light ashes and alders, but in general open to the sky, of which it was the mirror. It shone now golden and blue under the deepening light of the afternoon; and two or three hundred yards away Mary Elsmere distinguished two figures walking beside it--a young man apparently, and a girl. Meynell looked at them absently. "That's one of the most famous trout-streams in the Midlands. There should be a capital rise to-night. If that man has the sense to put on a sedge-fly, he'll get a creel-full." "And what is that house among the trees?" asked his companion presently, pointing to a gray pile of building about a quarter of a mile away, on the other side of the stream. "What a wonderful old place!" For the house that revealed itself stood with an impressive dignity among its stern and blackish woods. The long, plain front suggested a monastic origin; and there was indeed what looked like a ruined chapel at one end. Its whole aspect was dilapidated and forlorn; and yet it seemed to have grown into the landscape, and to be so deeply rooted in it that one could not imagine it away. Meynell glanced at it. "That is Sandford Abbey. It belongs, I regret to say, to a neer-do-weel cousin of mine who has spent all his time since he came into it in neglecting his duties to it. Provided the owner of it is safely away, I should advise you and Mrs. Elsmere to walk over and see it one day. Otherwise it is better viewed at a distance. At least those are my own sentiments!" Mary followed the house with her eyes as they walked along the bank of the stream toward the two figures on the opposite bank.