Strangers yet! Strange and bitter thought to scan All the loneliness of man! Nature by magnetic laws Circle unto circle draws; Circles only touch when met, Never mingle—strangers yet. Strangers yet! Will it evermore be thus— Spirits still impervious? Shall we ever fairly stand Soul to soul, as hand to hand? Are the bounds eternal set To retain us strangers yet? Strangers yet! Tell not love it must aspire Unto something other—higher: God himself were loved the best, Were man’s sympathies at rest; Rest above the strain and fret Of the world of strangers yet! Strangers yet! R. MONCKTON MILNES. Framley Parsonage. CHAPTER X. LUCY ROBARTS. [Illustration: LORD LUFTON AND LUCY ROBARTS.] And now how was he to tell his wife? That was the consideration heavy on Mark Robarts’ mind when last we left him; and he turned the matter often in his thoughts before he could bring himself to a resolution. At last he did do so, and one may say that it was not altogether a bad one, if only he could carry it out. He would ascertain in what bank that bill of his had been discounted. He would ask Sowerby, and if he could not learn from him, he would go to the three banks in Barchester. That it had been taken to one of them he felt tolerably certain. He would explain to the manager his conviction that he would have to make good the amount, his inability to do so at the end of the three months, and the whole state of his income; and then the banker would explain to him how the matter might be arranged. He thought that he could pay 50_l._ every three months with interest. As soon as this should have been concerted with the banker, he would let his wife know all about it. Were he to tell her at the present moment, while the matter was all unsettled, the intelligence would frighten her into illness. But on the next morning there came to him tidings by the hands of Robin postman, which for a long while upset all his plans. The letter was from Exeter. His father had been taken ill, and had very quickly been pronounced to be in danger. That evening—the evening on which his sister wrote—the old man was much worse, and it was desirable that Mark should go off to Exeter as quickly as possible. Of course he went to Exeter—again leaving the Framley souls at the mercy of the Welsh low Churchman. Framley is only four miles from Silverbridge, and at Silverbridge he was on the direct road to the west. He was therefore at Exeter before nightfall on that day. But nevertheless he arrived there too late to see his father again alive. The old man’s illness had been sudden and rapid, and he expired without again seeing his eldest son. Mark arrived at the house of mourning just as they were learning to realize the full change in their position.