There was another associated matter, too, which gave him food for uneasy reflection, especially in the light of certain remarks once made by his girl love--and that was the Romish savour of much of the Judge’s literature. Was this Uncle of his really at heart, or had been, a Papist? It was a dangerous thing to be suspect of such sympathies in these days. Yet there was that story of his disgrace, which might not be calumny, and there were these pious evidences, which might, after all, be no more than the evidences of an enthusiastic book-lover. It would seem at least that the little ‘_Horae Beatae_’ had been personal to the devotions of Jane Middleton, for the marks of frequent use were visible on its pages. He thought of the slender fingers turning the leaves, of the wistful face bent above them, with a strange indulgent feeling that was like protection. Well, she anyhow was dead, and beyond the reach of persecution. He felt the tears very near his eyes again. So the books had taught him something which he had never looked to find in them. They could not, alas! teach him how to forget, but rather, through this discovery, had aggravated his memory. Was it to be his fate always to be forsaken of his womankind? For a time again the anguish of his recent loss drove him to desperation. He wandered incessantly abroad, visiting, with melancholy iteration, every spot connected with his lost love’s presence--the glen, the copse, the old well-house. That place held no terrors for him at last. If he had felt any hesitation about re-entering it, he had savagely turned on himself for suspecting what was for ever now made lovable through her association with it. It was the sanctum where, recalling her sweetness and her endearingness, he could most let his emotions free. His own sad spirit haunted it in a way, with a force, to overbear and extinguish all lesser ghosts. He was in there, one day, leaning against the rim of the big wheel and indulging his most twilight mood, when something occurred of a sufficient interest to afford his mind at least a temporary surcease from its dejection. He had been recalling, for the hundredth time, that unforgettable morning of the adventure, and how resolute she had been, the darling, and how clear-headed; and how her bright temerity had been innocent of all moral-pointing, when she might have despised him for his cowardice. Would the contempt come now, he thought, if she could know him for what he was? Or did she already know--or guess? There must have been some half-conscious purpose in her assurance to him, so quaintly expressed, of her indifference to the name given him by her father. Pondering it all, he fell into a fit of profound musing, from which he was suddenly startled by the sound of the well laughing.