"I think it is rather stiff myself." "Is Sir John selling the place through some local agent or solicitor?" "Oh no. Messrs. Begum & Swear, Chancery Lane, are acting for him." An hour later, Ralph was rolling away in an express train towards the west. He sat next the window, and kept his eyes steadily fixed on the scenery through which he passed. And yet he saw very little of it; his thoughts were too intent on other things. Towns, villages, hamlets, homesteads, flew past, but he scarcely heeded. Wooded hills drew near and faded away in the distance. The river gleamed and flashed and hid itself. Gaily-dressed people made patches of colour in shady backwaters for a moment; the sparkle of a weir caught his eye, and was gone. It was only in after days that he recalled the incidents of the journey; for the moment he could think of nothing but Dorothy Hamblyn and the sale of Hillside Farm. The sudden failure of his small commercial enterprise did not worry him. He knew the worst of that. To cry over spilt milk was waste both of time and energy. His business was not to bewail the past, but to face resolutely the future. But Dorothy and the fate of Hillside Farm belonged to a different category. Dorothy he could not forget, try as he would. She had stolen his heart unconsciously, and he would never love another. At least, he would never love another in the same deep, passionate, overmastering way. He was still angry with himself for his mad outburst of the previous day, and could not imagine what possessed him to speak as he did. He wondered, too, what she thought of him. Was her feeling one of pity, or anger, or amusement, or contempt, or was it a mixture of all these qualities? Then, for a while, she would pass out of his mind, and a picture of Hillside Farm would come up before his vision. On the whole, he was not sorry that the squire was compelled to sell. It was a sort of Nemesis, a rough-and-ready vindication of justice and right. The place never was his in equity, whatever it might be in law. If it belonged to anybody, it belonged to the man who reclaimed it from the wilderness. No, he was not sorry that the squire was unable to keep it. It seemed to restore his faith in the existence of a moral order. A man who was not worthy to be a steward--who abused the power he possessed--ought to be deposed. It was in the eternal fitness of things that he should give place to a better man. Ruth met him at St. Ivel Road Station, and they walked home together in the twilight. They talked fitfully, with long breaks in the conversation. He had told her by letter the result of his mission, so that he had nothing of importance to communicate.