‘I shall never achieve any great work in London,’ he told himself. ‘For my _magnum opus_ I must have the tranquillity of wood and moor.’ He had quite made up his mind that he was to write a great poem, though he had settled neither the subject nor the form. He was waiting for the divine breath to inspire him. The poem was to be as popular as the ‘Idylls of the King,’ but as passionate as ‘Chastelard.’ He was not going to write in a goody-goody strain to please anybody. Edward Clare felt himself a little like the prodigal son, when he came home to the Vicarage after this abortive campaign in the field of literature. If he had not wasted his substance, it was only because he had little substance to waste. He had spent all that his father had sent him, and had received small additions to this allowance out of his mother’s scantily-supplied purse. He came home penniless and dispirited: and he felt rather offended that no fatted calf was slain to do him honour, and that his parents received him with an air of unmistakable despondency. ‘Really, my dear Edward, you ought to begin to think of some definite course,’ said the father. ‘It may be too late for a profession, but the Government offices----’ ‘Red tape and drudgery, with a salary that would scarcely afford dry bread and a garret,’ interrupted Edward contemptuously. ‘No, my dear father, as a poet I will stand or fall.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ sighed the Vicar, ‘for at present it looks like falling.’ What Edward really meant was that he would depend upon his father until the public and the critics, or the critics and the public, could be brought to acknowledge him as one of the new lights in the starry world of imagination. Mr. Clare understood this, and felt that it was rather hard upon him as a man of limited means. Edward arrived at Hazlehurst only the night before Mrs. Treverton’s dinner-party. ‘Oh, yes, I’m going,’ he told Celia, when she asked him if he had accepted Laura’s invitation. ‘I want to see how this Treverton fellow plays the country squire.’ ‘As if to the manner born,’ answered Celia. ‘The part suits him admirably. I don’t want to wound your feelings, Ted, dear, but Mr. Treverton and Laura are the happiest couple I ever saw.’ ‘“These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die,”’ quoted Edward, with a diabolical sneer. ‘I am not going to envy them their happiness, my dear. Whatever feeling I once entertained for Laura is dead and buried. A woman who could sell herself, as she has done--’ ‘Sell herself! Oh, Ted, how can you say anything so dreadful? I tell you she is devotedly attached to John Treverton.’