Frank was speaking in his lowest audible tones, but he stopped suddenly. He was afraid for a moment that he would actually lose all control over himself. As he spoke all his strange dreams and fancies surged back over his mind, and he could hardly prevent himself from crying aloud. He looked up and caught Margery's eye, and she, seeing that something was wrong, referred a point which she or Mr. Greenock had been discussing to his wife. Meantime Frank pulled himself together, but registered a solemn vow that never till the crack of doom should Mrs. Greenock set foot in his house again. He and Margery had had a small tussle over the necessity of asking the vicar to dinner, but Margery had insisted that every one always asked the vicar to dine, and Frank, of weaker will than she, had acquiesced. Poor Mrs. Greenock had unconsciously launched herself on very thin ice, and Frank inwardly absolved himself from all responsibility if she tried the experiment again. When the two ladies left the room Mr. Greenock's feather-bed descents began in earnest. It was trying, but he was less likely to go in dangerous places than his predatory wife. He would not drink any more wine, and he would not smoke; but when Frank proposed that they should join the ladies, he said: "It so seldom happens, in this secluded corner of the world, that I can converse with men who have lived their lives in a sphere so different to mine, that I confess I should much enjoy a little longer talk with you." "Yes, I suppose you get few visitors here," said Frank. "The visitors we get here," said Mr. Greenock, "are chiefly tourists who are not inclined for an interchange of thought and experience. Sometimes I see them in our little church-yard where so many men of note are buried, but they do not stop. Indeed, it would indicate a morbid tendency if they did." "I have often noticed how many names one knows are on the graves in your church-yard," said Frank. "It is a solemn thought," said Mr. Greenock, "that in our little church-yard lies all that is mortal of so many brilliant intellects and exceptional abilities. 'Green grows the grass on their graves,' as my wife beautifully expressed it the other day in a little lyric." "Dear me, I did not know that Mrs. Greenock wrote poetry," said Frank. "She is a sonneteer of considerable power," said the vicar. Frank, who had always thought of Mrs. Greenock in the light of a Puritan rather than a sonneteer, gave a sudden choke of laughter. But Mr. Greenock was arranging his next sentence and did not hear it. "Her verses are always distinguished by their thoughtfully chosen similes," he continued, "and their flow of harmonious language." "You can hardly feel out of the world if you always have a poet by you."