The upper tracts of heaven were beginning to grow gray, the sun was sinking in a bed of red and gold behind a clump of oaks on the edge of the horizon--the dark and delicate outline of leafless branches distinctly marked against that yellow light. Wimperfield Park was almost at its best upon such an afternoon as this, the turf soft and springy after autumnal rains, the atmosphere tranquil and balmy, and all animal creation--deer, oxen, rabbits, feathered game, and an innumerable army of rooks--full of life and motion. Ida was slow to reply to Bessie's news about her cousin. The two girls walked on in silence for a little way, Vernon running ever so far ahead of them to look for fallen nuts in a grove of fine old Spanish chestnuts, which stood boldly out on the top of a hill. 'Don't you feel sorry that he is going away?' asked Bessie at last; 'just as he had established himself among us, and begun all kinds of improvement at the Abbey farm, and was even thinking of building new schools.' 'It is a pity,' said Ida. 'It is simply horrid. He is quite as bad as those Irish Absentees who are continually getting murdered; or he would be as bad, if he had not arranged with my father for the carrying on of all his plans while he is away.' 'That is very good of him.' 'Good, yes; but it will be a dreadful responsibility for poor father, and I daresay we shall all be worried about it. He will have builders on the brain till the work is finished. My poor John has promised to look after the schools; and he is so conscientious that he will wear himself to a shadow rather than neglect the smallest detail.' 'But are you not pleased that he can be of so much use?' 'I am obliged to be pleased. I am going to be a clergyman's wife; and I must teach myself to look at everything from the parochial point of view. John and I will not belong to ourselves, but to our parish. Our own pleasure, our own health, our own interests, must be as nothing to us. We must only exist as machines for the maintenance of the proper church services and for the relief of the sick and poor.' 'If you think it too hard a life, dear, there is time for you to draw back!' 'Oh, Ida, do you think I am like Lot's wife, regretting the false frivolous world I am going to renounce? What life could be too hard shared with _him?_' 'God bless you, dear. I believe your life will be a very happy one,' said Ida, earnestly, and with a touch of melancholy. There was so much that was enviable in Bessie's fate. Then, after a pause, she said hesitatingly, 'Do you know why your cousin is going to leave England?'