The experiences of the man who mingles freely with men, who shares their pleasures and sorrows, and even their follies and foibles, are of infinitely higher value than those of a solitary liver. Such an existence narrows the sympathies, and it narrowed Seth's. The exercise of all the better feelings of his nature was confined to the small circle which included only Sally and the Duchess, and what of good he saw outside that boundary was evoked by his love for these children of his adoption. Surrounded by these influences the Duchess grew in years. Seth bestowed upon her the fullest measure of affection, and he let her go her way. He placed no restraint upon her; he demanded no sacrifice from her. He never attended a place of worship, nor did she; he had his hard-and-fast opinions upon religious matters, which, viewed in the light (or darkness) of dogmatic belief, constituted him a materialist--an accusation which, with a proper understanding of the term, he would have indignantly denied. Thus, from month to month, and year to year, Rosemary Lane passed through a routine of daily tasks and duties, so dull as to weigh sorely and heavily upon the soul of the Duchess. Colour was necessary to her existence, and she sought for it and obtained it in other places. Stronger and stronger grew her passion for wandering from the narrow to the wider spaces, where the life was more in harmony with her desires, and so frequently and for so long a time was she now absent that, on one occasion when she was missing from morning till night, Seth took her to task for her truant propensities. "Do you want me to keep always in Rosemary Lane?" she inquired, with her lovely blue eyes fixed full upon him. "It would be best," was his reply. "It doesn't matter to you," she said, "whether I stop at home or not; there is nothing for me to do, and I sometimes feel that--that----" Her eyes wandered round the cellar in dull discontent, and with something of self-reproach, also, for the feeling which she strove but could not find words to express. "Well, my dear?" said Seth, patiently waiting for an explanation. "Only this, guardian," she rejoined, "that I must go away when I like, and that you mustn't stop me. If you do"--with a little laugh which might mean anything or nothing--"I might run away altogether." "Then there are other places," said Seth, after a short pause; he found it necessary very often when conversing with the Duchess to consider his words before he uttered them; "and other people that you love better than us." "Other places, not other people. I don't know any other people." "You don't love Rosemary Lane, my dear," he said wistfully. "What is there to love in it?" she replied, evading the question. "I might love it less if I were not free to go from it when the fit seizes me----" "But you go always alone, my dear," he said, with a sigh, "and I am afraid you might get into mischief."