I had nothing to say to this. Nor could I have expected that she would understand _me_. We were walking quickly, for it required no small exertion to keep up with Miss Saville, who strode along in her thick boots with a manly disregard of every obstacle--along the lane which led to the village. Just before we reached Cottisbourne, we passed the Rectory. Miss Saville looked up at it as she passed, and so did I. I was startled to see a face looking out from the window, which I recognised, or fancied I recognised. It was a weather-beaten face, unshaven and slovenly, and stooped forward with an inquisitive, sidelong glance. I tried to recollect where I had seen it. Could this be Saville--_the_ Saville--the man who brought Edgar Southcote to Cottiswoode? I was disposed to think so. My companion gazed at him a moment, and then waved her hand impatiently, as if to bid the man go from the window. Yet I had been now three weeks at Cottiswoode, had frequently seen the clergyman and his sister, but had never heard of another. I wondered why they concealed him--I wondered if it _was_ he; but Miss Saville never spoke. We were close upon the village now. The first group of two or three houses stood by themselves upon the brown grass of the meadow-land around. They seemed to have no gardens, no trees, nothing to protect or shelter them; but stood apart among the grass, which pressed round their very walls and doorsteps, as if it grudged the little bit of ground they occupied. There were some plants in the window of almost every house, poor, shabby plants, crushed against the green gauze curtain suspended across the three lower panes, darkening the light; but doing little else by way of compensation. The want of gardens seemed to disconnect them strangely from the soil on which they stood. There was no beauty or sentiment about them; but only very poor, meagre, hungry poverty. Beyond them, a very small stream, which made no sound in the heavy, deadened atmosphere, wound through a field, with some low willows standing by, like a class of unkempt boys at school. A little further on, withdrawn into a grassy mass, was the village well, with its bucket and windlass; and then came Cottisbourne proper, a cluster of houses oddly placed, with strange little narrow lanes winding among them, as intricate as a child's puzzle: some brown and dingy, with the thatched roof clinging upon them like a growth of nature--some brilliantly whitewashed, with great patches of damp, from the rain, upon their walls. One or two carts tilted up, stood in a corner of the bit of common which belonged to the village. About them, and in them, were a number of children, whose voices scarcely woke the sullen air to cheerfulness. The houses stood about in genuine independence, every one faring as it pleased him, and the wealthy cottager's pig sniffed the same air as his master, and placidly meditated upon the doings of his master's next neighbor, whose