The other thing that moved her was the suggestion of going home. Home meant to Evelyn the county in which she had spent her life, the house in which she had been born. Nothing more likely than that the very dwelling was in the market, that he might buy it--that she the last Ferrars might recover possession of the house of her fathers. She had heard something to this effect with that acuteness to catch a half-said inference in respect to anything that is of personal interest which is so remarkable. Had it concerned any property on earth but Langley Ferrars, she would never have caught the words: but because it was about her old home she had heard what two men were saying in the crowd of a station hall--“A property in Huntingdonshire,” “dirt cheap,” “last man couldn’t keep it up.” She had divined from this that her home was to be bought, that it could yet be recovered. Oh no, no, she cried to herself, covering her face with her hands, not for anything in the world! To go back there where she had been a happy girl, where all her dreams of love and happiness had taken place, where the famous oaks and bucks of Selston, which was _his_ home, were visible from the windows! Oh no, no--oh no, no: that indeed was more than she could bear. In Scotland it would be another matter. It was no doubt the very thing which a kind man without very fine preceptions would do, to buy back her home for her, to take her there in triumph. A thrill of almost physical terror came over her. “Oh no,” she said to herself, “oh no, no, no!” These were the two things that disturbed the dreamy calm of that sensation of trial over, the kind of moral convalescence in which she found herself. They came through the misty quiet with flashes of alarm. But, on the whole, Evelyn felt as if she had been ill and was getting better, slowly coming round to a world which was changed indeed, and had lost something, but also had gained something, a world with no vague outlines in it or uncertainty, but clearly defined, spread out like a map before her. Perhaps there was something to regret in the old solitude to which her subdued life could retire out of all its troublesome conditions, and be its own mistress. But solitude, though it may be soothing, is not cheerful: and if she relinquished that, there was surely something in the constant companionship of one who had the highest regard for her, thought the very best of her, looked upon all her ways and words with admiration which should make up. He was a good honest man. He rang as true as a silver bell. There was nothing in him to be ashamed of. He was kind and genuine, with right thoughts and no false shame, but for that unaccountable failure about the children--a man as good as any she had met with in all her life. And to say there was no romance about the business, was to say the most foolish untruthful thing. Why it was all romance, far more than the girl and boy love-story, where they ran away