“I am afraid that’s inevitable, Theo. I can’t transfer a fine practice to my son till I’ve made him a good lawyer—and God knows how long that will take in Harrington’s case. Judging by my present estimation of him, I should say half a century. But don’t be downhearted, Theo. You shall eat your dinners. You shall qualify for the Woolsack. After all, I don’t know how a life of leisure might suit me. It would be a change from the known to the unknown, almost as stupendous as the change from life to death.” Perhaps Matthew Dalbrook had fathomed that secret woe at which Theodore had hinted darkly; in any case he took his elder son’s defection more easily than might have been hoped, and bore patiently with some preliminary fatuity from the younger son, who accepted the gift of his articles, an allowance of two hundred pounds per annum, and the promise of a junior partnership in the near future, with the languid politeness of one who felt that he was renouncing a mitre. Everything was settled off-hand, and Theodore was to go to London at the end of September to select and furnish his modest chambers in one of those grave old courts of the Temple, and be ready to begin his new life with the beginning of term. He had not seen Juanita since the funeral, and she had been told nothing of this sudden reconstruction of his life; but he determined to see her before he left Dorchester, and he considered that he had a right, as her kinsman, to bid her good-bye. Perhaps in his heart-weariness he was inclined to exaggerate the solemnity of that leave-taking, somewhat as if he had been starting for Australia. He drove over to the Priory on a dull, grey afternoon, his last day in Dorchester. His portmanteaus were packed, and all things were ready for an early departure next morning. Sorely as he had sickened of the good old town which was his birth-place, he felt a shade of melancholy at the idea of cutting himself adrift altogether from that quiet haven; and the love of those open stretches of barren heath and those swampy meadows and grazing cattle on the way to Milbrook, was engrained in him deeper than he knew. It was a landscape which took a peculiar charm from the grey dimness of an autumnal atmosphere, and it seemed to Theodore Dalbrook that those level pastures and winding waters had never looked fairer than they looked to-day. He had written to his cousin a day before to tell her of his intended visit. It was too solemn a matter in his own mind for him to leave the finding her at home to chance. His groom took the dog-cart round to the stables, while he was ushered at once to the drawing-room where Lady Carmichael was sitting at her work-table in the bow window, with Styx stretched on a lion-skin at her feet.