The day after Malcolm had his new hack, he rode him behind his mistress in the park, and nothing could be more decorous than the behaviour of both horse and groom. It was early, and in Rotten Row, to his delight, they met the lady of rebuke. She and Florimel pulled up simultaneously, greeted, and had a little talk. When they parted, and the lady came to pass Malcolm, whom she had not suspected, sitting a civilised horse in all serenity behind his mistress, she cast a quick second glance at him, and her fair face flushed with the red reflex of yesterday’s anger. He expected her to turn at once and complain of him to her mistress, but to his disappointment, she rode on. When they left the park, Florimel went down Constitution Hill, and turning westward, rode to Chelsea. As they approached Mr Lenorme’s house, she stopped and said to Malcolm-- “I am going to run in and thank Mr Lenorme for the trouble he has been at about the horse. Which is the house?” She pulled up at the gate. Malcolm dismounted, but before he could get near to assist her, she was already halfway up the walk-- flying, and he was but in time to catch the rein of Abbot, already moving off, curious to know whether he was actually trusted alone. In about five minutes she came again, glancing about her all ways but behind, with a scared look, Malcolm thought. But she walked more slowly and statelily than usual down the path. In a moment Malcolm had her in the saddle, and she cantered away--past the hospital into Sloane Street, and across the park home. He said to himself, “She knows the way.” CHAPTER XXVI. THE SCHOOLMASTER. Alexander Graham, the schoolmaster, was the son of a grieve, or farm-overseer, in the North of Scotland. By straining every nerve, his parents had succeeded in giving him a university education, the narrowness of whose scope was possibly favourable to the development of what genius, rare and shy, might lurk among the students. He had laboured well, and had gathered a good deal from books and lectures, but far more from the mines they guided him to discover in his own nature. In common with so many Scotch parents, his had cherished the most wretched as well as hopeless of all ambitions, seeing it presumes to work in a region into which _no_ ambition can enter--I mean that of seeing their son a clergyman. In presbyter, curate, bishop, or cardinal, ambition can fare but as that of the creeping thing to build its nest in the topmost boughs of the cedar. Worse than that; my simile is a poor one; for the moment a thought of ambition is _cherished_, that moment the man is out of the kingdom. Their son with already a few glimmering insights, which had not yet begun to interfere with his acceptance of the doctrines of his church, made no opposition to their wish, but having qualified himself to the satisfaction of his superiors, at length ascended the pulpit to preach his first sermon.