if that reunion would ever be. Mr. Mildmay had been out that evening at dinner at the Ascotts, where he very often went on Sunday. The school was not at all in the way between the Heath and the rectory, yet Cicely met him on her way back. It was a May evening, soft and sweet, with the bloom of the hawthorn on all the hedges, and Cicely was walking along slowly, glad to prolong as much as possible that little oasis in her existence which Mab's visit made. She was surprised to hear the rector's voice so close to her. They walked on together for a few steps without finding anything very particular to say. Then each forestalled the other in a question. "I hope you are liking Brentburn?" said Cicely. And Mr. Mildmay, in the same breath, said: "Miss St. John, I hope you do not regret coming to the school?" Cicely, who had the most composure, was the first to reply. She laughed softly at the double question. "It suits me better than anything else would," she said. "I did not pretend to take it as a matter of choice. It does best in my circumstances; but you, Mr. Mildmay?" "I want so much to know about you," he said, hurriedly. "I have not made so much progress myself as I hoped I should; but you? I keep thinking of you all the time. Don't think me impertinent. Are you happy in it? Do you feel the satisfaction of living, as it seems to me you must?" "Happy?" said Cicely, with a low faint laugh. Then tears came into her eyes. She looked at him wistfully, wondering. He so well off, she so poor and restricted. By what strange wonder was it that he put such a question to her? "Do you think I have much cause to be happy?" she said; then added hastily, "I don't complain, I am not _un_happy--we get on very well." "Miss St. John," he said, "I have spoken to you about myself before now. I came here out of a sort of artificial vegetation, or at least, so I felt it, with the idea of getting some hold upon life--true life. I don't speak of the misery that attended my coming here, for that, I suppose, was nobody's fault, as people say; and now I have settled down again. I have furnished my house, made what is called a home for myself, though an empty one; and lo, once more I find myself as I was at Oxford, looking at life from outside, spying upon other people's lives, going to gaze at it enviously as, I do at you through the end window----"