These views of the Colonel's were due, no doubt, to his present position with Lady Helena. The causes which were gradually dividing them had been slowly operating for several years, but the effects which resulted from them were now much more visible than they had ever previously been. First they had walked together on one path, then the path had been divided into two by an all but invisible separation--still they had walked together. But now the two paths were diverging so widely that the eye began to measure the space between them, and as it measured the space widened. It is as when two trains leave some great railway station side by side. For a time they are on the same railroad, but after a while you begin to perceive that the distance from your own train to the other is gradually widening; and on looking down to the ground, which seems to flow like a swift stream, you see a streak of green between the two diverging ways, and it deepens to a chasm between two embankments; and after that they are separated by spaces ever widening--spaces of field and river and wood--till the steam of the other engine has vanished on the far horizon. John Stanburne's offers of assistance were very sincere, but what, in a practical way, could he do? He could not make Mr. Stedman come round by asking him to Wenderholme. There were plenty of people at Sootythorn who would have done any thing to be asked to Wenderholme, but Mr. Stedman was not one of them. Him the blandishments of aristocracy seduced not; and there was something in his looks, even when you met him merely by accident for an hour, as the Colonel had met him at Arkwright Lodge, which told you very plainly how obdurate he would be where his convictions were concerned, and how perfectly inaccessible to the most artful and delicate coaxing. So the Colonel's good offices were for the present very likely to be confined to a general willingness to do something when the opportunity should present itself. The day fixed for the ceremony of presentation of colors was now rapidly approaching, and the invitations had all been sent out. It was the Colonel's especial desire that this should take place at Wenderholme, and the whole regiment was to arrive there the evening before, after a regular military march from Sootythorn. The Colonel had invited as many guests of his own as the house could hold; and, in addition to these, many of the Sootythorn people, and one family from Whittlecup, were asked to spend the day at Wenderholme Hall, and be witnesses of the ceremony. The Whittlecup family, as the reader has guessed already, was that from Arkwright Lodge; and it happened that whilst the Colonel was talking with Philip Stanburne about his matrimonial prospects, Mr. Joseph Anison came to the Blue Bell to call upon his young friend.